Goslings

. ' •
i iH

Goslings

New 6s. Novels

THE AMBASSADRESS. By William Wriothes-
ley.

THE WEAKER VESSEL. By E. F. Benson,

author of " Account Rendered," etc.

" WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO . . . P "

By Elizabeth Robins, author of "The Magnetic
North," etc.

A RUNAWAY RING. By Mrs Henry Dude-
ney, author of "The Orchard Thief," etc.

LU OF THE RANGES. By Eleanor Mor-
daunt, author of " The Cost of It," etc.

THE STORY OF STEPHEN GOMPTON.

By J. E. Patterson, author of " Tillers of the Soil," etc.
THE FRONTIERS OF THE HEART.

By Victor Margueritte.

JOHN CHRISTOPHER (IV). Journey's End.

By Remain Holland, translated by Gilbert Cannan.
THE HIPPODROME. By Rachel Hayward.

GUTTER BABIES. By Dorothea Slade, illustrated
by Lady Stanley.

MINNA. By Karl Gjellerup, author of "The Pilgrim
K am anna."

GROWING PAINS. By Ivy Low.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

Goslings

By
J. D. Beresford

Author of "The Hampdenshire Wonder," etc.

London

William Heinemann
1913

Cob/right, 1918]

860413

I— THE GOSLING FAMILY

" WHERE'S the gels gone to? " asked Mr Gosling.

" Up the 'Igh Road to look at the shops. I'm
expeclin' 'em in every minute."

"Ho!" said Gosling. He leaned against the
dresser; the kitchen was hot with steam, and he
fumbled for a handkerchief in the pocket of his black
tail coat. He produced first a large red bandanna
with which he blew his nose vigorously. " Snuff
'andkerchief; brought it 'ome to be washed," he
remarked, and then brought out a white handker-
chief which he used to wipe his forehead.

" It's a dirty 'abit snuff-taking," commented Mrs
Gosling.

" Well, you can't smoke in the orfice," replied
Gosling.

" Must be doin' something I suppose? " said his
wife.

When the recital of this formula had been accom-
plished— it was hallowed by a precise repetition
every week, and had been established now for a
quarter of a century — Gosling returned to the sub-
ject in_hand.

4 GOSLINGS

" They does a lot of lookin' at shops," he said,
"and then nothin' '11 satisfy 'em but buyin' somethin'.
Why don't they keep away from 'em? "

" Oh, well; sales begin nex' week," replied Mrs
Gosling. " An' that's a thing we 'ave to consider in
our circumstances." She left the vicinity of the gas-
stove, and bustled over to the dresser. " 'Ere, get out
of my way, do," she went on, " an' go up and change
your coat. Dinner'll be ready in two ticks. I shan't
wait for the gells if they ain't in."

" Them sales is a fraud," remarked Gosling, but
he did not stop to argue the point.

He went upstairs and changed his respectable
" morning " coat for a short alpaca jacket, slipped
his cuffs over his hands, put one inside the other
and placed them in their customary position on the
chest of drawers, changed his boots for carpet slip-
pers, wetted his hair brush and carefully plastered
down a long wisp of grey hair over the top of his bald
head, and then went into the bathroom to wash his
hands.

There had been a time in George Gosling's his-
tory when he had not been so regardful of the decen-
cies of life. But he was a man of position now, and
his two daughters insisted on these ceremonial
observances.

Gosling was one of the world's successes. He had
started life as a National School boy, and had worked
his way up through all the grades — messenger, office-
boy, junior clerk, clerk, senior clerk, head clerk,
accountant — to his present responsible position as
head of the counting-house, with a salary of £26 a

THE GOSLING FAMILY 5

month. He rented a house in Wisteria Grove,
Brondesbury, at £45 a year; he was a sidesman of
the church of St John the Evangelist, Kilburn; a
member of Local Committees; and in moments of
expansion he talked of seeking election to the Dis-
trict Council. A solid, sober, thoroughly respectable
man, Gosling, about whom there had never been a
hint of scandal; grown stout now, and bald — save
for a little hair over the ears, and that one persistent
grey tress which he used as a sort of insufficient
wrapping for his naked skill.

Such was the George Gosling seen by his wife,
daughters, neighbours, and heads of the firm of
wholesale provision merchants for whom he had
worked for forty-one years in Barbican, E.C. Yet
there was another man, hardly realized by George
Gosling himself, and apparently so little representa-
tive that even his particular cronies in the office
would never have entered any description of him,
if they had been obliged to give a detailed account of
their colleague's character.

Nevertheless, if you heard Gosling laughing up-
roariously at some story produced by one of those
cronies, you might be quite certain that it was a
story he would not repeat before his daughters,
though he might tell his wife — if it were not too
broad. If you watched Gosling in the street, you
would see that he took a strange, unaccountable
interest in the feet and ankles of young women.
And if many of Gosling's thoughts and desires had
been translated into action, the Vicar of St John the
Evangelist would have dismissed his sidesman with

6 GOSLINGS

disgust, the Local Committees would have had no
more of him, and his wife and daughters would have
regarded him as the most depraved of criminals.

Fortunately, Gosling had never been tempted
beyond the powers of his resistance. At fifty-five, he
may be regarded as safe from temptation. He seldom
put any restraint upon his thoughts, outside busi-
ness hours; but he had an ideal which ruled his life —
the ideal of respectability. George Gosling counted
himself — and others counted him also— as respectable
a man as could be found in the Metropolitan Police
area. There were, perhaps, a quarter of a million
other men in the same area, equally respectable.

As he was drying his hands, Gosling heard the front
door slam and his daughters' voices in the passage
below, followed by a shrill exhortation from the
kitchen: "Now, gels, 'urry up, dinner's all ready
and your father's waitin' ! "

Gosling trotted downstairs and received the usual
salute from his two girls. He noted that they were a
shade more effusive than usual. " Want more money
for fal-lals," was his inward comment. They were
always wanting money for " fal-lals."

He adopted his usual line of defence through
dinner and constantly brought the subject of con-
versation back to the need for a reduction of expenses.
He did not see Blanche wink at Millie across the
table, during these strategic exercises; nor catch
the glance of understanding which passed between

THE GOSLING FAMILY 7

the girls and their mother. So, as his dinner com-
forted and cheered him, Gosling began to relax into
his usual facetiousness; incredibly believing, despite
the invariable precedents of his family history,
that his daughters had been convinced of the
hopelessness of approaching him for money that
evening.

The credulous creature even allowed them to
make their opening, and then assisted them to a state-
ment of their petition.

They were talking of a friend's engagement to be
married, and Gosling with an obtuseness he never
displayed in business remarked, " Wish my gels 'ud
get married."

" Talking about us, father? " asked Blanche.

" Well, you're the only gels I've got — as I know
of," said Gosling.

" Well, how can you expect us to get married
when we haven't got a decent thing to put on?"
returned Blanche.

Gosling realized his danger too late. " Pooh! That
don't make any difference," he said hastily, adopting
a thoroughly unsound line of defence; " I never
noticed what your mother was wearing when I
courted 'er."

" Dessay you didn't," replied Millie, " I dessay
most fellows couldn't tell you what a girl was wear-
ing, but it makes just all the difference for all that."

" Of course it does," said Blanche. " A girl's got
no chance these days unless she can look smart. No
fellow's going to marry a dowdy."

" It does make a big difference, there's no

8 GOSLINGS

denyin'," put in Mrs Gosling, as though she was
being convinced against her will.

" And now the sales are just beginning "

Poor Gosling knew the game was up. They had
made no diredl: attack upon his pocket, yet ; but they
would not relax their grip of this fascinating sub j eel:
till they had achieved their object. Blanche was say-
ing that she was ashamed to be seen anywhere; and
procrastination would be met at once by the argu-
ment— how well he knew it — based on the premise
that if you didn't buy at sale-time, you had to pay
twice as much later.

It was quite useless for Gosling to fidget, throw
himself back in his chair, frown, shake his head, and
look horribly determined; the course of progress was
unalterable from the diredl: attack: " Do you like to
see us going about in rags, father? " through the
stage of " Well, well, 'ow much do you want? I

simply can't afford " and the ensuing haggles

down to the despairing sigh as the original minimum
demanded — in this case no less than five pounds —
was forlornly conceded, and clinched by Blanche's,
" We must have it before the end of the week, dad,
the sales begin on Monday."

At the end of it all, he received what compen-
sation they had to offer him; hugs and kisses, offers
to do all sorts of impossible things, assistance in
getting his armchair into precisely the right position,
and him into the chair, and the table cleared and the
lamp in just the right place for him to read his half-
penny evening paper which was fetched for him from
the pocket of his overcoat. And, finally, the crux of

THE GOSLING FAMILY 9

Gosling's whole position, a general air of compla-
cency, good-temper and comfort.

Gosling was an easy-going man, he hated rows.

" Mind you, you two," he remarked with a return
to facetiousness as he settled himself with his carpet
slippers spread out to the fire — " mind you, I look
on this money as an investment. You two gels got to
get married; and quick or I shall be in the bank-
rup'cy Court. Don't you forget as these ' fal-lals ' is
bought for a purpose."

" Oh, don't be so horrid, father," said Blanche,
with a change of front ; " it sounds as if we were
setting traps for men."

" Well, ain't you? " asked Gosling. " You said
just now "

" Not like that," interrupted Blanche. " It's very
different just wanting to look nice. Personally, I'm
in no 'urry to get married, thank you."

" You wait till Mr Right comes along," put in Mrs
Gosling, and then turned the conversation by say-
ing: " Well, father, what's the news this even-
ing? "

" Nothin' excitin'," replied Gosling. " Seems this
new plague's spreadin' in China."

" They're always inventin' new diseases, now-
adays, or callin' old ones by new names," said Mrs
Gosling. The two girls were busy with a sheet of
note-paper and a stump of pencil that seemed to
require frequent lubrication; they were making cal-
culations.

" This one's quite new, seemingly," returned
Gosling. " It's only the men as get it."

io GOSLINGS

" No need for us to worry, then," put in Millie,
more as a duty, some slight return for benefits pro-
mised, than because she took any interest in the sub-
ject. Blanche was absorbed; her unseeing gaze was
fixed on the mantelpiece and ever and again she re-
moved the point of the pencil from her mouth and
wrote feverishly.

" Oh, ain't there? " replied Gosling. He
turned his head in order to argue from so strong
a position. " And where'd you be, and all the rest
of the women, if you 'adn't got no men to look after
you? "

" I expect we could get along pretty well, if we
had to," said Millie.

Gosling winked at his wife, and indicated by an
upward movement of his chin that he was astounded
at such innocence. " Who'd buy your ' fal-lals ' for
you, I should like to know? " he asked.

" We'd have to earn money for ourselves," said
Millie.

" Ah! I'd like to see you or Blanche takin' over my
job," replied her father. " Why, I'll lay there's 'alf a
dozen mistakes in the figurin' she's doing at the pre-
sent moment. Let me see! "

Blanche descended suddenly from visions of Para-
dise, and put her hand over the sheet of note-paper.
" You can't, father," she said.

Gosling looked sly. " Indeed? " he said, with
simulated surprise. " And why not? " Ain't I to be
allowed to judge of the nature of the investment I'm
goin' in for? I might give you an 'int or two from the
gentleman's point of view."

THE GOSLING FAMILY 1 1

Blanche shook her head. " I haven't added it up
yet," she said.

Gosling did not press the point; he returned to
his original position. " I dunno where you ladies 'ud
be if you 'adn't no gentlemen to look after you."

Mrs Gosling smirked. "We'll 'ope it won't come to
that," she said. " China's a long way off."

" Appears as there's been one case in Russia,
though," remarked Gosling. He saw that he had
rather a good thing in this threat of male extermina-
tion, a pleasant, harmless threat to hold over his
feminine dependents; a means to emphasize the
facts of masculine superiority and of the absolute
necessity for masculine intelligence; fa els that were
not sufficiently well realized in Wisteria Grove, at
times.

Mrs Gosling yawned surreptitiously. She was
doing her best to be pleasant, but the subject bored
her. She was a practical woman who worked hard
all day to keep her house clean, and received very
feeble assistance from the daughters for whom her
one ambition was an establishment conducted on
lines precisely similar to her own.

Millie and Blanche had returned to their calcula-
tions and were completely absorbed.

" In Russia? Just fancy," commented Mrs Gosling.

" In Moscow," said Gosling, studying his Evening
News. " 'E was an official on the trans-Siberian
Railway. ' As soon as the disease was identified as
a case of the new plague,' ' read Gosling, " * the
patient was at once removed to the infectious
hospital and strictly isolated. He died within two

12 GOSLINGS

hours of his admission. Stringent measures are being
taken to prevent the infection from spreading.' '

" Was 'e a married man? " asked Mrs Gosling.

" Doesn't say," replied her husband. " But the
point is that if it once gets to Europe, who knows
where it'll stop? "

" They'll see to that, you may be sure," said Mrs
Gosling, with a beautiful faith in the scientific
resources of civilization. " It said somethin' about
that in the bit you've just read."

Gosling was not to be done out of his argument.
" Very like," he said. " But now, just supposin' as
this 'ere plague did spread to London, and 'alf the
men couldn't go to work; where d'you fancy you'd
be?"

Mrs Gosling was unable to grasp the intricacies of
this abstraction. " Well, of course, every one knows
as we couldn't get on without the men," she said.

"Ah! well there you are, got it in once," said
Gosling. " And don't you gels forget it," he added
turning to his daughters.

Millie only giggled, but Blanche said, " All right,
dad, we won't."

The girls returned to their calculations; they had
arrived at the stage of cutting out all those items
which were not " absolutely necessary." Five pounds
had proved a miserably inadequate sum on paper.

Gosling returned to his Evening News, which
presently slipped gently from his hand to the floor.
Mrs Gosling looked up from her sewing and put a
finger on her lips. The voices of Blanche and Millie
were subdued to sibilant whisperings.

THE GOSLING FAMILY 1 3

Gosling had forgotten his economic problems, and
his daring abstractions concerning a world despoiled
of male activity, especially of that essential activity,
as he figured it, the making of money — the wage-
earner was enjoying his after-dinner nap, hedged
about, protected and cared for by his womankind.

There may have been a quarter of a million wage-
earners in Greater London at that moment, who,
however much they differed from Gosling on such
minor questions as Tariff Reform or the capabilities
of the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, would
have agreed with him as a matter of course, on the
essentials he had discussed that evening.

3

AT half-past nine the click of the letter-box, followed
by a resounding double-knock, announced the arrival
of the last post. Millie jumped up at once and went
out eagerly.

Mr Gosling opened his eyes and stared with
drunken fixity at the mantelpiece; then, without
moving the rest of his body, he began to grope
automatically with his left hand for the fallen news-
paper. He found it at last, picked it up and pretended
to read with sleep-sodden eyes.

" It's the post, dear," remarked Mrs Gosling.

Gosling yawned enormously. " Who's it for? " he
asked.

"Millie! Millie!" called Mrs Gosling. "Why
don't you bring the letters in? "

Millie did not reply, but she came slowly into the

i4 GOSLINGS

room, in her hands a letter which she was examining
minutely.

" Who's it for, Mill? " asked Blanche, impatiently.

" Father," replied Millie, still intent on her study.
" It's a foreign letter. I seem to remember the writ-
ing, too, only I can't fix it exactly."

" 'Ere, 'and it over, my gel," said Gosling, and
Millie reluctantly parted with her fascinating
enigma.

" I know that 'and, too," remarked Gosling, and
he, also, would have spent some time in the attempt
to guess the puzzle without looking up the answer
within the envelope, but the three spectators, who
were not sharing his interest, manifested impatience.

" Well, ain't you going to open it, father? " asked
Millie, and Mrs Gosling looked at her husband over
her spectacles and remarked, " It must be a business
letter, if it comes from foreign parts."

" Don't get business letters to this address,"
returned the head of the house, " besides which it's
from Warsaw; we don't do nothin' with Warsaw."

At last he opened the letter.

The three women fixed their gaze on Gosling's
face.

" Well? " ejaculated Millie, after a silence of
several seconds. " Aren't you going to tell us? "

" You'd never guess," said Gosling triumphantly.

" Anyone we know? " asked Blanche.

" Yes, a gentleman."

" Oh! tell us, father," urged the impatient Millie.

" It's from the Mr Thrale, as lodged with us once,"
announced Gosling.

THE GOSLING FAMILY 1 5

"Oh! dear, our Mr Fastidious," commented
Blanche, " I thought he was dead long ago."

" It must be over four years since 'e left," put in
Mrs Gosling.

" Getting on for five," corrected Blanche.
" I remember I put my hair up while he was
here."

" What's he say? " asked Millie.

" 'E says, * Dear Mr Gosling, I expect you will be
surprised to 'ear from me after my five years'
silence ' "

" I said it was five years," put in Blanche. " Go
on, dad!"

Dad resumed " . . . * but I 'ave been in various
parts of the world and it 'as been quite impossible
to keep up a correspondence. I am writing now to
tell you that I shall be back in London in a few days,
and to ask you whether you can find a room for me
in Wisteria Grove? '

" Well! I should 'ave thought he'd 'ave written
to me to ask that! " said Mrs Gosling.

" So 'e should 'ave, by rights," agreed Gosling.
" But 'e's a queer card is Mr Thrale."

" Bit dotty, if you ask me," said Blanche.

" 'S that all? " asked Mrs Gosling.

" No, 'e says: * I can't give you an address as I go
on to Berlin immediately, but I will look you up
the evening after I arrive. Eastern Europe is not safe
at the present time. There 'ave been several cases
of the new plague in Moscow, but the authorities are
doing everything they can — which is much in Russia
— to keep the news out of the press, yours sincerely,

16 GOSLINGS

Jasper Thrale," and that's the lot," concluded
Gosling.

" I do think he's a cool hand," commented Blanche.
" Of course you won't have him as a paying guest
now? "

Gosling and his wife looked at each other, thought-
fully.

" Well " hesitated Gosling.

" 'E might bring the infection," suggested Mrs
Gosling.

"Oh! no fear of that," returned her husband,
" but I dunno as we want a boarder now. Five years
ago I 'adn't got my big rise "

" Oh, no, father; what would the neighbours
think of us if we started to take boarders again? "
protested Blanche.

" It wouldn't look well," agreed Mrs Gosling.

" Jus* what I was thinking," said the head of the
house. " 'Owever, there's no 'arm in payin' us a
friendly visit."

" O' course not," said Mrs Gosling, " though I
do think it odd 'e shouldn't 'ave written to me in
the first place.

" He's dotty! " said Blanche.

Gosling shook his head. " Not by a very
long chalk 'e ain't," was his firm pronounce-
ment. . . .

" Well, girls, what about bed? " asked Mrs Gosling,
putting away the " bit of mending " she had been
engaged upon.

Gosling yawned again, stretched himself, and rose
grunting to his feet. " I'm about ready for my bed,"

THE GOSLING FAMILY 17

he remarked, and after another yawn he started his
nightly round of inspection.

When he returned to the sitting-room the others
were all ready to retire. Gosling kissed his daughters,
and the two girls and their mother went upstairs.
Gosling carefully took off the larger pieces of coal
from the fire and put them under the grate, rolled
up the hearthrug, saw that the window was securely
fastened, extinguished the lamp and followed his
" womenfolk."

As he was undressing his thoughts turned once
more to the threat of the new disease which was
devastating China.

" Rum thing about that new plague," he re-
marked to his wife. " Seems as it's only men as get it."

" They'd never let it spread to England," replied
Mrs Gosling.

" Oh! there's no fear of that, none whatever,"
said Gosling, " but it's rum that about women never
catching it."

The attitude of the Goslings faithfully reflected
that of the immense majority of English people.
The faith in the hygienic and scientific resources
which were at the disposal of the authorities, and
the implicit trust in the vigilance and energy of
those authorities, were sufficient to allay any fears
that were not too imminent. It was some one's duty
to look after these things, and if they were not looked
after there would be letters in the papers about it.
At last, without question, the authorities would be
roused to a sense of duty and the trouble, whatever
it was, would be stopped. Precisely what authority

iR GOSLINGS

managed these affairs none of the huge Gosling family
knew. Vaguely they pictured Medical Boards, or
Health Committees; dimly they connected these
things with local government ; at the top, doubtless,
was some managing authority — in Whitehall pro-
bably— something to do with the supreme head of
affairs, the much abused but eminently paternal
Government.

II— THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE

" LORD, how I do envy you," said Morgan Gurney.

Jasper Thrale sat forward in his chair. " There's
no reason why you shouldn't do what I've done —
and more," he said.

" Theoretically, I suppose not," replied Gurney.
" It's just making the big effort to start with. You
see I've got a very decent berth and good prospects,
and it's comfortable and all that. Only when some
fellow like you comes along and tells one yarns of the
world outside, I get sort of hankerings after the sea
and adventure, and seeing the big things. It's only
now and then — ordinary times I'm contented
enough." He stuck his pipe in the corner of his mouth
and stared into the fire.

" The only things that really count are feeling
clean and strong and able," said Thrale. " You never
really have that feeling if you live in the big cities."

" I've felt like that sometimes after a long bicycle
ride," interpolated Gurney.

" But then the feeling is wasted, you see," said
Thrale. " When you feel like that and there is some-
thing tremendous to spend it upon, you get the
great emotion as well."

( Like the glimmer of St Agnes' light, after you'd
19 C2

20 GOSLINGS

been eight weeks out of sight of land? " reflected

Gurney, going back to one of Thrale's reminiscences.

" To feel that you are a part of life, not this dead,
stale life of the city, but the life of the whole uni-
verse," said Thrale.

" I know," replied Gurney. " To-night I've half
a mind to chuck my job and go out looking for
mystery."

" But you won't do it," said Thrale.

Gurney sighed and began to analyse the instinct
within himself, to find precisely why he wanted to
doit.

" Well, I must go," said Thrale, getting to his
feet, " I've got to find some sort of lodging."

" I thought you were going to stay with those
Gosling people of yours," said Gurney.

" No! That's off. I went to see them last night
and they won't have me. The old man's making his
.£300 a year now, and the family's too respectable to
take boarders." Thrale picked up his hat and held
out his hand.

" But, look here, old chap, why the devil can't
you stay here? " asked Gurney.

" I didn't know that you'd anywhere to put me,"
said Thrale.

" Oh, yes. There's always a room to be had down-
stairs," said Gurney.

After a brief discussion the arrangement was
made.

" It's understood I'm to pay my whack," said
Thrale.

" Of course, if you insist "

THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE 21

When Thrale had gone to fetch his luggage from
the hotel, Gurney sat pondering over the fire. He
was debating whether he had been altogether wise in
pressing his invitation. He was wondering whether
the curiously rousing personality of Thrale, and the
stories of those still existent corners of the world
outside the rules of civilization were good for a
civil servant with an income of ^600 a year. Gurney,
faced with the plain alternatives, could only decide
that he would be a fool to throw up a congenial and
lucrative occupation such as his own, in order to
face present physical discomfort and future penury.
He knew that the discomforts would be very real to
him at first. His friends would think him mad. And all
for the sake of experiencing some high emotion now
and again, in order to feel clean and fresh and be
able to discover something of the unknown mystery
of life.

" I suppose there is something of the poet in me,"
reflected Gurney. " And I expect I should hate the
discomforts. One's imagination gets led away . . ."

DURING the next few evenings the conversations
between these two friends were many and pro-
tracted.

Thrale was the teacher, and Gurney was content
to sit at his feet and learn. He had a receptive mind,
he was interested in all life, but Uppingham, Trinity
Hall, and the Home Civil had constricted his mental
processes. At twenty-nine he was losing flexibility.
Thrale gave him back his power to think, set him

22 GOSLINGS

outside the formulas of his school, taught him that
however sound his deductions, there was not one of
his premises which could not be disputed.

Thrale was Gurney's senior by three years, and
when Thrale left Uppingham at eighteen, he had
gone out into the world. He had a patrimony of
some £200 a year; but he had taken only a lump
sum of £100 and had started out to appease his
furious curiosity concerning life. He had laboured as
a miner in the Klondike; had sailed, working his
passage as an ordinary seaman, from San Francisco to
Southampton; he had been a stockman in Australia,
assistant to a planter in Ceylon, a furnace minder in
Kimberley and a tally clerk in Hong Kong. For
nearly nine years, indeed, he had earned a living in
every country of the world except Europe, and then
he had come back to London and invested the
accumulation of income that his trustee had
amassed for him. The mere spending of money had
no fascination for him. During the six months he
had remained in London he had lived very simply,
lodging with the Goslings in Kilburn, and, because
he could not live idly, exploring every corner of the
great city and writing articles for the journals. He
might have earned a large income by this latter
means, for he had an originality of outlook and a
freshness of style that made his contributions
eagerly sought after once he had obtained a hearing
— no difficult matter in London for anyone who has
something new to say. But experience, not income,
was his desire, and at the end of six months he had
accepted an offer from the Daily Post as a European

THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE 23

correspondent — on space. He was offered £600 a
year, but he preferred to be free, and he had no
wish to be confined to one capital or country.

In those five years he had traversed Europe,
sending in his articles irregularly, as he required
money. And during that time his chief trustee — a
lawyer of the soundest reputation — had absconded,
and Thrale found his private income reduced to
about .£40 a year, the interest on one of the invest-
ments he had made, in his own name only, with his
former accumulation — two other investments made
at the same time had proved unsound.

This loss had not troubled him in any way. When
he had read in a London journal of his trustee's
abscondence — he was later sentenced to fourteen
years' penal servitude — Thrale had smiled and
dismissed the matter from his mind. He could
always earn all the money he required, and had
never, not even subconsciously, relied upon his
private fortune.

He had now come back to London with a definite
purpose, he had come to warn England of a great
danger. . . .

One other distinguishing mark of Jasper Thrale's
life must be understood, a mark which differentiated
him from the overwhelming majority of his fellow
men — women had no fascination for him. Once in
his life, and once only, had he approached and tasted
experience — with a pretty little Melbourne cocotte.
That experience he had undertaken deliberately,
because he felt that until it had been undergone one
great fadlor of life would be unknown to him.

24 GOSLINGS

He had come away from it filled with a disgust of
himself that had endured for months. . . .

3

FRAGMENTS of the long conversations betweenThrale
and Gurney, the exchange of a few germane ideas
among the irrelevant mass, had a bearing upon their
immediate future. There was, for instance, a
criticism of the Goslings, introduced on one occasion,
which had a certain significance in relation to
subsequent developments.

Some question of Gurney's prompted Thrale to
the opinion that the Goslings were in the main
precisely like half a million other families of the
same class.

" But that's just what makes them so interesting,"
said Gurney, not because he believed it, but because
at the moment he wanted to lead the conversation
into safe ground, away from the too appealing
attractions of the big world outside the little village
of London.

Thrale laughed. " That's truer than you guess,"
he said. " Every large generalization, however trite,
is a valuable contribution to knowledge — if it's more
or less accurate."

" Generalize, then, mon vieux," suggested Gur-
ney, " from the characters and doings of your little
geese."

" I've seen glimmerings of the immortal god in
the old man," said Thrale, " like the hint of sunlight
seen through a filthy pane of obscured glass. He's a
prurient-minded old beast leading what's called a

THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE 25

respectable life, but if lie could indulge his ruling
desire with absolute secrecy, no woman would be
safe with him. In his world he can't do that, or
thinks he can't, which comes to precisely the same
thing. He is too much afraid of being caught, he
sees danger where none exists, he looks to all sorts
of possibilities, and won't take a million-to-one
chance because he is risking his all — which is in-
cluded in the one word, respectability."

" Jolly good thing. What? " remarked Gurney.

" Good for society as a whole, apparently,"
replied Thrale, " but surely not good for the
man. I've told you that I have seen glimmerings
of the god in him, but outside the routine of his
work the man's mind is clogged. He's not much over
fifty, and he has no outlet, now, for his desires. He's
like a man with choked pores, and his body is
poisoned. And in this particular Gosling is certainly
no exception either to his class or to the great mass
of civilized man. Well, what I wonder is whether in
a society which is built up of interdependent units
the whole can be sound when the greater number
of the constituent units are rotten."

" But look here, old chap," protested Gurney,
" if things are as you say, and men rule the country,
why shouldn't they alter public opinion, and so
open the way to do as they jolly well please? "

" Because the majority are too much ashamed of
their desires to dare the attempt in the first place,
and in the second because they don't wish to open
the way for other men. They aren't united in this;
they are as jealous as women. If they once opened

26 GOSLINGS

the way to free love, their own belongings wouldn't
be safe."

" What's your remedy, then? "

"Oh! a few thousand more years of moral
development," said Thrale, carelessly, " an evolu-
tion towards self-consciousness, a fuller under-
standing of the meaning of life, and a finer altruism."

" You don't look far ahead," remarked Gurney.

" Do you think anyone can look even a year
ahead? " asked Thrale.

" There have been some pretty good attempts
in some ways — Swedenborg, for instance, and
Samuel Butler. ..."

" Yes, yes, that's all right, in some ways — the
development of certain sorts of knowledge, for
example. But there is always the chance of the
unpredictable element coming in and upsetting the
whole calculation. Some invention may do it, an
unforeseen clash of opinions or an epidemic. . . ."

For a time they drifted further away from their
original topic till some remark reminded Gurney
that he had meant to ask a question and had forgot-
ten it.

" By the way," he said, " I wanted to ask you what
you meant when you said you had seen a god in old
Gosling? "

" Just a touch of imagination and wonder, now
and again," replied Thrale. " Something he was
quite unconscious of himself. I remember standing
with him on Blackfriars Bridge, and he looked down
at the river and said : * I s'pose it was clean once,
banks and sand and so on, before all this muck

THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE 27
came.' Then he looked at me quickly to see if I was
laughing at him. That was the god in him trying to
create purity out of filth, even though it was only a
casual thought. It was smothered again at once.
His training reasserted itself. * Lot better for trade
the way it is, though,' was his next remark."

" But how can you alter it? " asked Gurney.

" My dear chap, you can't alter these things by
any cut-and-dried plan, any more than you can dam
the Gulf Stream. We can only lay a brick or two in
the right place. We aren't the architects; the best
of us are only bricklayers, and the best of the best
can only lay two or three bricks in a lifetime. Our
job is to do that if we can. We can only guess very
feebly at the design of the building; and often it is
our duty partly to pull down the work that our
forefathers built. ..."

Presently Gurney asked if his companion had ever
seen a god in Mrs Gosling.

Thrale shook his head. " It didn't come within
my experience," he said. " Don't condemn her on
that account, but she, like all the women I have
ever met, has been too intent upon the facts of life
ever to see its mystery. Mrs Gosling hadn't the
power to conceive an abstract idea; she had to make
some application of it to her own particular experi-
ence before she could understand the simplest
concept. Morality to her signified people who
behaved as she and her family did; wickedness meant
vaguely, criminals, Sarah Jones who was an un-
married mother, and anyone who didn't believe in
the God of the Established Church. Always people,

28 GOSLINGS

you see, in this connexion; in others it might be
things; but ideas apart from people or things she
couldn't grasp. Her two daughters thought in
precisely the same way. ..."

4

ONE Saturday afternoon Thrale came into Gur-
ney's chambers and burst out: " Just Heaven! why
you fools stand it I can't imagine ! "

" What's up now? " asked Gurney.

Thrale sat down and drew his chair up to the
table. The pupils of his dark eyes were contracted
and seemed to glow as if they were illuminated from
within.

" I was in Oxford Street this morning, watching
the women at the sales," he said. " All the biggest
shops in London are devoted to women's clothes.
Do you realize that? And it's not only that they're
the biggest — there are more of them than any other
six trades put together can show, bar the drink
trade, of course. The north side of Oxford Street
from Tottenham Court Road to the Marble Arch is
one long succession of huge drapers and milliners.
And what in God's name is the sense or reason of
it? What do these huge shops sell? "

" Dresses, I suppose," ventured Gurney, " and
stockings, underlinen, corsets, hats, and so on."

" And frippery," said Thrale, fixing his brilliant
dark eyes on Gurney, " And frippery. Machine lace,
ribbons, yokes, cheap blouses, feathers, insertions,
belts, fifty thousand different kinds of bits and rags
to be tacked on here and there, worn for a few

THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE 29

weeks and then thrown away. Millions of little
frivolous, stupid odds and ends that are bought by
women and girls of all classes below the motor-
class, to make a pretence — gauds and tawdry rubbish
not one whit better from the artistic point of view
than the shells and feathers of any half-naked
Melanesian savage. In fact, meaningless as the
Melanesians' decorations are, they do achieve more
effect. And what's it all for, I ask you ? "

Thrale paused, and Gurney offered his solution.

"The sex instinct, fundamentally, isn't it? " he
said. " The desire — often subconscious, no doubt —
to attract."

" Well, if that is so," said Thrale, " what terribly
unintelligent fools women must be ! If women really
set out to attract men, they must realize that they
are pandering to a sex instinct. Do you think any
man is attracted by a litter of odds and ends?
Doesn't every woman sneer when they see some
Frenchwoman, perhaps, who dresses to display her
figure instead of hiding it? Don't they bitterly
resent the fact that their own men-folk are resist-
lessly drawn to stare at, and inwardly desire, such a
woman? Don't they know perfectly well that such
a woman is attractive to men in a way their own
disguised bodies can never be? "

"Yes, old chap; but your average middle-class
English girl hasn't got the physical attractions to
start with," put in Gurney.

" Look at it in another way, then," replied
Thrale. " Doesn't every woman know perfectly
well — haven't you heard them say — that a nurse's

30 GOSLINGS

dress is very becoming — a plain, more or less
tightly-fitting print dress, with linen collars and
cuffs? Don't you know yourself that that attire is
more attractive to you than any befrilled and
bedecorated arrangement of lace, ribbons and
gauds? Why are so many men irresistibly attracted
by parlourmaids and housemaids? "

" Yes," meditated Gurney, " that's all true
enough. Well, are women all fools, or what is it? "

" The majority of women are sheep," said Thrale.
" They follow as they are led, and don't or won't
see that they are being led. And the leaders are
chiefly men — men who have trumpery to sell.
Why do the fashions change every year — sometimes
more often than that in matters of detail? Because
the trade would smash if they didn't. New fashions
must be forced on the buyers, or the returns would
drop; women would be able to make their last
year's clothes do for another summer. That must be
stopped at any cost. Those vast establishments must
maintain an enormous turnover if they are to pay
their fabulous rents and armies of assistants. There
are two means of keeping up the sales, and both are
utilized to the full. The first is to supply cheap,
miraculously cheap, rubbish which cannot be made
to last for more than a season. The second is to alter
the fashions which affecl: the more durable stuffs, so
that last year's dresses cannot be used again. This
fashion-working scheme reacts upon the poorer
buyers, because it compels them to do something to
imitate the prevailing mode, if they can't afford to
have entirely new frocks. That is where all these

THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE 3 1

bits of frilling and what-not come in; make-believe
stuff to imitate the real buyers — the large majority
of whom don't buy in Oxford Street, by the way.

" Mind you, there is a limit to the sheep-like
docility of women in this connexion. They refused,
for instance, to return to the crinoline, and they
refused the harem skirt — one of the very few
sensible devices of the fashion-imposers. And this
in the face of the prolonged, strenuous and expensive
methods of the fashion ring. With regard to the
crinoline, I think that failure was due to over-conceit
on the part of the fashion-imposers. They had come
to believe that they could make the poor fools of
women accept anything, and on the two marked
occasions on which they attempted to introduce the
crinoline, the contrast to the existing mode was too
glaring. If the fraud had been worked more gradu-
ally by way of full skirts and flounces, some modifica-
tion of the crinoline to the necessities of 'buses and
tubes might have been foisted upon the buyers."

" Oh, my Lord! " ejaculated Gurney; " do you
mean to say that women just accept these fashions
without any sense or reason at all? "

" You're rather a blithering ass, at times, Gurney,"
remarked Thrale.

Gurney smiled. " You don't give me time to
think," he said, " I feel like an accumulator being
charged. I haven't had time yet to begin working
on my own account. You're so mighty — so mighty
dynamic — and positive, old chap."

" Well, it's so absurdly obvious that there must
be a reason for women accepting the fashions, you

32 GOSLINGS

idiot!" returned Thrale. "And the first and
biggest reason is class distinction. The women with
money want to brag of it by differentiating them-
selves from the ruck of their sisters, and the poor
women try to imitate them to the best of their
ability. Women dress for other women. There is
sex rivalry as well as class rivalry at the bottom of
it, but they dare not put sex rivalry first and dress
to please men alone, because they are afraid of the
opinions of other women."

" Sounds all right," said Gurney, and sighed.

" And we, damned fools of men, stand all this
foolishness and pay for it. Pay, by Jove! I should
think so! I should like to see the trade returns of all
the stuff of this kind that is sold in England alone
in one year. They would make the naval estimates
look small, I'll warrant. We even imitate the
women's foolishness in some degree. There are men's
fashions too, but the madness is not so marked;
fortunately the body of middle-class men can't
afford to make fools of themselves as well as of their
women — though they are asses enough to wear
linen shirts and collars which are uncomfortable
unsightly and expensive to wash."

Gurney regarded his lecturer's canvas shirt and
collar, and then stood up and observed his own
immaculate linen in the glass over the fireplace. " I
must say I like stiff collars and shirts," he remarked;
" gives one a kind of spruceness."

Thrale laughed. " It's only another sex instinct,"
he said. " Women like men to look ' smart.' When
you are playing games with other men, or camping

THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE 33
out, you don't care a hang for your ' spruceness.'
Oh! and I'll admit the class distinction rot comes
in too. You're afraid of public opinion, afraid of
being thought common. If the jeunesse doree started
the soft shirt in real earnest, you would soon be
able to persuade your women that that looked
smart or spruce, or whatever you liked to call it."

" Look here, you know," said Gurney, " you're an
anarchist, that's what you are."

" You're half a woman, Gurney," said Thrale.
" You think in names. All people are * anarchists '
who think in ideas instead of following conven-
tions."

5

NOT until he had been staying with Gurney for
more than a week did Thrale speak explicitly of his
purpose in London. But one cold evening at the end
of January, as the two men were sitting by a roaring
fire that Gurney had built up, the younger man
unknowingly opened the sub j eel: by saying,

" Things are pretty slack at the present moment.
The Evening Chronicle has even fallen back on the
* New Plague ' for the sake of news."

" What do they say? " asked Thrale. He was
lying back in his chair, nursing one knee, and staring
up at the ceiling.

" Oh, the usual rot! " said Gurney " That the
thing isn't understood, has never been ' described '
by any medical or scientific authority; that it is
apparently confined to one little corner of Asia at
the present time, but that if it got hold in Europe

D

34 GOSLINGS

it might be serious. And then a lot of yap about the
unknown forces of Nature; special article by a chap
who's been reading too much Wells, I should

seems so incredible to us in twentieth-
century England that anything really serious could
happen," remarked Thrale. " We are so well looked
after and cared for. We sit down and wait for some
authority to move, with a perfect confidence that
when it does move, everything is bound to be all
right."

" With such an organism as society has become,"
said Gurney, " things must be worked like that. A
certain group to perform one function, other
groups for other functions, and so on."

" Cell-specialization? " commented Thrale.
" Some day to be perfected in socialism."

" I believe socialism must come in some form,"
said Gurney.

" Yes, it's an interesting speculation, in some
ways," said Thrale, " but the higher forces are
about to put a new spoke in the human wheel, and
the machinery has to be stopped for a time."

" What have you got hold of now? " asked
Gurney.

" The thoughtful man," went on Thrale, still
staring up at the ceiling, " would have asked me to
define my expression ' the higher forces.' '

" Well, old man, I knew that was beyond even
your capacity," returned Gurney, " so I thought
we might ' cut the cackle and come to the 'osses.' '

Thrale suddenly released his knee and sat upright;

THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE 35

then he moved his chair so that he directly con-
fronted his companion.

" Look here, Gurney," he said, and the pupils of
his eyes contracted till they looked like black crystal
glowing with dark red light. " Do you realize how
some outside control has always diverted man's
progress; how when nations have tended to crystal-
lize into specialized government, some irruption
from outside has always broken it up? You can trace
the principle through all known history, but the
most marked cases are those of the Egyptians and
the Incas — two nations which had developed
specialized government to a science. There is some
power — whether we can credit it with an intelligence
in any way comprehensible to us from the feeble
basis of our own knowledge, I doubt — but there is
some outside power which will not permit mankind
to crystallize into an organism. From our, human,
point of view, from the point of view of individual
comfort and happiness, it would be of enormous
benefit to us if we could develop a system of
specialization and swamp the individual in the
community. And in times of peace and prosperity
that is always the direction in which civilization
tends to evolve. But beyond a certain point — as the
individualists have not failed to point out — that
state of perfect government will lead to stagnation,
degeneration, death. Now, in the little span of
time that we know as the history of mankind, there
has been no world-civilization. As soon as a nation
tended to become over-civilized and degenerate,
some other, younger, more barbarous people flowed

D2

36 GOSLINGS

over them and wiped them out. In the case of Peru
the process had gone very far, owing to the advan-
tages of the Incas' peculiar segregation. But then,
you see, the development in the East, the new
world (I ought to explain that I find the oldest
civilization of the present epoch in America)
reached a point in Spain and England which sent
them out across a hemisphere to wreck and destroy
the Incas.

" Well, we have now reached a condition when
the nations are in touch with one another and
progress becomes more general. We are in sight of a
system of European, Colonial and Trans-Atlantic
Socialism, more or less reciprocal and carrying the
promise of universal peace. Whence, you ask, is any
irruption to come that will break up this strong
crystallizing system which is admittedly to work for
the happiness and comfort of the individual? There
has been much talk of an Asiatic invasion, a rebel-
lious India or an invading China, but those civiliza-
tions are older than ours; if we can trust the prece-
dents of history in this connexion, the conquerors
have always been the younger race." He broke off
abruptly.

Gurney had been sitting fascinated and hypno-
tized by the compulsion of Thrale's personality; he
had been held by the keen, intent stare of those
wonderful dark eyes. When Thrale stopped, how-
ever, the tension snapped.

"Well," remarked Gurney, " I think that's a jolly
good argument to prove that we have, at last, reached
a stage of universal progress towards the ideal."

THE OPINIONS OF JASPER THRALE 37

" You can't conceive," asked Thrale, " of any
cataclysm that would involve a return to the old
segregation of nations, and bring about a new epoch
beginning with separated peoples evolving on more
or less racial lines? "

Gurney pondered for a moment or two and then
shook his head.

" Little wonder," said Thrale, " I had often
considered this problem, and I could think of no
upheaval which would bring about the familiar effect
of submersion. Years ago there was always the
possibility of a European war, but even that would
have only a temporary effect despite the fore-
cast of Mr Wells in The War in the Air. No,
I considered and wondered if my theory was
faulty. I was willing to re] eel: it if I could find
a flaw. . . ."

" And then? " questioned Gurney.

Thrale leaned forward again and once more com-
pelled the other's fascinated attention.

" And then, when I was in Northern China, seven
weeks ago, I saw a solution, so appalling, so incon-
ceivably ghastly, that I rejected it with horror.
For days I went about fighting my own conviction.
I couldn't believe it! By God, I would not believe
it!

" There, within a hundred and fifty miles of the
border of Tibet, the outside forces have planted a
seed which has been maturing in secret for more
than a year. There that seed has taken root, and
from that centre is spreading more and more
rapidly, and it may spread over the whole world.

38 GOSLINGS

It is like some filthily poisonous and incredibly

prolific weed, and its seeds, now that it has once

established itself ; are borne by every wind, dropping

here and there in an ever-widening circle, every

seed becoming a fresh centre of distribution

outwards."

" But what, in Heaven's name, is the weed? "
whispered Gurney.

" A new disease — a new plague — unknown by
man, against which, so far as we know, he has no
weapon. In those scattered villages among the
mountains there are no men left to work. Everything
is done by women. They are prohibited more fiercely
than any leper settlement. No one dares to approach
within five miles of them. But every week or two
another village is smitten, and the inhabitants fly
in terror and carry the infection with them.

" Gurney, it's come to Europe! There are new
centres of distribution in Russia at the present
time. If it isn't stopped it will come to England.
And it doesn't decimate the population. It wipes the
men clean out of existence; not one man in ten
thousand, the Chinese say, escapes.

" Is it possible that this can be the means of the
* higher forces ' I spoke of, the means to segregate
the nations once more? "

Ill— LONDON'S INCREDULITY

JASPER TH RALE'S mission was no easy one. Eng-
land, it appeared, was slightly preoccupied at the
moment, and had no ear for warnings. Generally,
he was either treated as a fanatic and laughed at, or
he was told that he greatly exaggerated the danger
and that these matters could safely be entrusted to
the Local Government Board, which had brilliantly
handled the recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth
disease. But there were some exceptions to this
rule.

His first definite statement had been made to his
own editor, Watson Maxwell of the Daily Post.

" Yes," said Maxwell, when he had given Thrale
a patient hearing, " it is certainly a matter that needs
attention. Would you care to go out as our special
commissioner and report at length? . . ."

" There isn't time," replied Thrale. " The thing is
urgent."

Maxwell brought his eyebrows together and
looked keenly at his correspondent. " Do you really
think it's so serious, Thrale? " he asked. " After all,
what evidence have you, beyond the Chinese
reports? "

" I know there are several cases in Russia," said
Thrale.

39

40 GOSLINGS

" Yes, yes; I don't doubt that," returned Max-
well, with a touch of impatience. " But unless you
can bring evidence to show that this new disease is
as deadly as you say, it is not a matter that I could
give space to at the present time. For one thing, the
Evening Chronicle has been making rather a feature
of it for the last three or four days, and I don't see
that I could do much unless we had some special
inside information. Then, the House will be sitting
again next week, and it seems to me not altogether
improbable that we shall have a stormy session,
which will mean that a good deal of ordinary matter
will have to give way. ..." He broke off, and then
added, with a friendly smile: " But if you would go
out as our commissioner, we should be glad to make
you a proposal."

" There will be no need for a commissioner in a
week's time," replied Thrale. " You don't seem to
understand that I'm not looking out for a job. I
don't want to write articles; I don't want to be paid
for the information I can supply. I foresee a grave
danger, which is growing more grave hourly by
reason of the Russian Government's censorship of
all reports referring to the plague. It is a danger
which should be understood at once. If you send any
commissioner, send the cleverest physician you can
find, and a bacteriologist."

There could be no doubt of Thrale's earnestness,
and Maxwell, who was not only a very capable
editor, but also an able and intellectual man, was
impressed. Unfortunately, the interests of his pro-
prietors at that moment necessitated a great effort

LONDON'S INCREDULITY 41

to prop up the very unstable Liberal Government,
which had been in power for four years and was now
on its last legs. It was so essential from the pro-
prietors' point of view — three of them were on the
Government front bench — that the dissolution
should be postponed until such time as the Ministry
could go to the country with a reasonable prospect
of success. A tentative English Church Disestablish-
ment Bill was to be introduced in the coming
session, and it was hoped that if the Government had
to go to the country they could make a platform on
that one clear issue. It was a good Bill, designed to
win the Nonconformist vote, without completely
alienating the High Church party. In other words,
the Government was eager at that moment to please
the majority of the electors, which is, presumably,
the highest object of a representative government.

" If it had been at any other time," said Maxwell,
and pushed his chair back.

Thrale understood that the interview was at an
end. He rose from his chair and picked up his hat.

" We shall be glad to print any articles you care
to send us," said Maxwell, with his kind smile, " but
I can't undertake a campaign, you understand, at
the present moment."

It was nearly four o'clock, but Thrale just
managed to catch Groves of the Evening Chronicle.

GROVES had his hat on, and was just off to tea at
his club when Thrale's name was sent in to him. He

42 GOSLINGS

told the messenger that he would see Mr Thrale in
the waiting-room downstairs.

Thrale had had some experience of newspaper
methods, and he inferred that the reception was
equivalent to a refusal to see him. He knew what
those interviews in downstairs waiting-rooms im-
plied. It was not the first time that he had been
treated like an insurance agent or a tradesman and
told, in effect, " Not to-day, thank you."

In this case he was mistaken in his inference.
Groves had had an eye on Thrale's articles for some
time past, and though he thought it a diplomatic
essential to keep his man waiting for ten minutes, he
had no intention of offending him.

Groves came into the waiting-room with a
slightly abstracted air. " Sorry to keep you waiting
Mr Thrale," he said. " The fad is, that I wanted to
finish before I left. Did you want to see me about
anything particular? "

" Yes," returned Thrale; " I have some facts
about the new plague which ought to be given
publicity at once."

Groves pursed his thick lips and shook his head.
" Well, well," he said, " will you come and have tea
with me at the club? "

He took Thrale's assent for granted, and went out
abruptly, leaving his guest to follow.

In the taxicab Groves talked of nothing but the
lack of originality in invention in reference to
aeroplanes. He seemed to take it as a personal affront
that no workable adaptation of the aeroplane had
been made to short-distance passenger traffic.

LONDON'S INCREDULITY 43

Indeed, it was not till after " tea " — in Groves'
case an euphemism for whisky and soda — that he
would approach the subject of Thrale's visit.

" The fact is, my dear fellow," he said, " that our
campaign hasn't caught on. I'm going to lei it down
gently and drop it after to-day's edition. You see,
we've got to get the Government out this session,
and I'm going to start a new campaign. Can't give
you any particulars yet, but you'll see the beginning
of it next Monday." Like Maxwell, Groves differen-
tiated between the uses of the singular and plural
pronouns in speaking of his work. There was a
distinction to be inferred between the initiation and
responsibilities of the editor and those of his pro-
prietors.

Groves was not at all impressed by any earnestness
or forebodings. He seemed to think that a touch of
the plague in London might be rather a good thing
in some ways. People wanted waking up — especially
to the importance of getting rid of the present
Government.

It appeared that Thrale's articles on other subjects
would be acceptable to the readers of the Evening
Chronicle, but there was no suggestion that he
should go out to Russia as a special commissioner.

3

GRANT LACEY, of The Times, listened seriously to
Thrale's exposition, and then, in a finely delivered
speech which lasted twenty minutes, proved to his
own complete satisfaction that Thrale's premisses,
deductions, and whole argument were thoroughly

44 GOSLINGS

unsound. Lacey, however, was greatly interested in
the condition of Russia, and promised Thrale
magnificent terms if he would tour St Petersburg,
Moscow, Kiev, Warsaw — and then return and
contribute a special series of articles. References to
the new plague would not be prohibited in the
series if Thrale still found any cause for alarm.

In all, Thrale had interviews with the editors of
nine important journals; the other six developed on
the general lines already indicated — either he was
not taken seriously or was told that the danger was
greatly exaggerated. The real causes of his failure
were two : — first, the critical position of the Govern-
ment; second, the precocious campaign of the
Evening Chronicle — the latter had taken the wind
out of the sails of less enterprising journals.

Thrale's next step was to obtain introductions to
Ministers and prominent members of the Opposition ;
but from them he received even less attention — he
did not obtain interviews on many occasions — and,
if possible, less encouragement. The President of the
Local Government Board informed him that the
matter was already engaging that department's
energies; the others were all manifestly preoccupied
with more immediate interests.

But little less than a fortnight after the initiation
of his campaign Thrale received a special message
from the editor of the Daily Post. It was nearly mid-
night, and the messenger was waiting with a taxicab.

The message ran: " Received through news
agency report of three cases of plague in Berlin.
Can you come down at once? — Maxwell."

IV— MR BARKER'S FLAIR

JASPER THRALE, in the partial exposition of his
philosophy (if that description is not too large
for such vague imaginings), had included very
definite reference to certain " higher forces " to
which he had attributed peculiar powers of inter-
ference in humanity's management of its own
concerns. Doubtless these powers had control of
various instruments, and were able to exercise their
influence in any direction and by any means. In the
present case it would seem that they were working
in devious and subtle ways — and in this at least they
differed not at all from the methods attributable to
that we have called Providence, or the Laws of
Nature; any assumed guide or irrefragible, incom-
prehensible ordination. It is a common character-
istic of these forces that they seem able to control
the inconceivably great and the inconceivably small
with equal certitude.

Not that George Gosling touched any limits. He
was moderately large in body and small in intellect,
but neither the physical excess nor the mental
deficiency marked him out from his fellow men. In
the office, indeed, he was regarded by the firm and
his colleagues as a capable man of business whose

45

46 GOSLINGS

embonpoint was quite consistent with his employ-
ment by a firm of wholesale provision merchants.

On the Thursday morning that saw the announce-
ment in the morning papers that a case of the new
plague was reported in Berlin, Gosling was called
into the partners' private office on some matter of
accountancy.

The senior partner of Barker and Prince was eager,
grasping and imaginative; his name had originally
been German, and ended' in " stein," but he had
changed it for the convenience of his English con-
nexion. Prince was a large rubicund man, friendly
and noisy in his manners, but accounted a shrewd
buyer.

It was not until Gosling was about to depart that
the higher forces turned their attention to Barbican
and then they suddenly urged Gosling to say, with-
out premeditation on his part,

" I see there's a case of this 'ere new plague in
Berlin."

Mr Prince laughed and winked at his subordinate.
" Some of us'll have to start a hareem, soon; who
knows? " he said, and laughed again, more loudly
than ever.

" I suppose you haf not heard any other reports,
eh? " asked Mr Barker.

" Well, curiously enough, I 'ave," said Gosling.
" A young feller who used to lodge with us five
years back, come 'ome from Russia about a fortnight
since, and 'e tells me as the plague's spreadin' like
wildfire in Russia."

Mr Prince laughed again, and Mr Barker seemed

MR BARKER'S FLAIR 47

about to turn his attention to other matters, when
the higher forces sent Gosling the one great inspira-
tion of his life. It came to him with startling sudden-
ness, but he gave utterance to it as simply and with
as little verve as he spoke his " good morning " to
the office-boy.

" I been thinkin', sir," he said (he had never once
thought of it until this moment), " as it might be
well to keep a neye on this plague, so to speak."

"Ah! Zo? " said Mr Barker; a phrase which
Gosling correctly interpreted as the expression of a
desire for the elucidation of his last remark.

" Well, I been thinkin', if you'll excuse me, sir,"
he went on, " as though the plague's only in the
bud, so to speak, at the present time, it seems very
likely to spread so far as we can judge; and that what
with quarantine, p'raps, and p'raps shortage of
labour and so on, it might mean 'igher prices for
our stuff."

" Zo! " said Mr Barker, but this time the mono-
syllable was reflexive. The great inspiration had
found fruitful soil.

" Brince," continued Barker after a minute's
thought, " I haf a flair. We will buy heavily at once.
But not through our London house, no; or others
will follow us too quickly. You must not go, we will
zend Ztewart from Dundee, it will zeem that we
prepare for the zhipping strike in the north. We buy
heavily; yes? I haf a flair."

" But, I say," said Mr Prince, who had the
greatest confidence in his partner's insight, " I say,
Barker, d'you think this plague's serious? "

48 GOSLINGS

"I am putting money on it, ain't I?" asked
Barker.

Prince and Gosling exchanged a scared glance.
Until that moment it had not come home to either
of them that it was possible for English affairs to be
affected by this strange and deadly disease.

The remainder of the conversation was com-
plicated and exceedingly technical.

WHEN he came back into the counting-house,
Gosling looked unnaturally thoughtful.

" Anything gorne wrong? " asked his crony,
Flack.

" There's nothing wrong with the 'ouse, if that's
what you mean," replied Gosling mysteriously.

" What then? " asked Flack.

" It's this 'ere new plague," returned Gosling.

" Tchah ! That's all my eye," said Flack. He was
a narrow-chested, high-shouldered man of sixty,
with a thin grey beard, and he had a consistently
incredulous mind.

Out here in the counting-house, Gosling's thrill
of fear was rapidly subsiding, and he had no intention
of passing over his own important part in the house's
decision to buy for a rise ; so he bulged out his cheeks,
shook his head and said :

" Not by a long chalk it ain't, Flack; not by a
long chalk. There was that young feller, Thrale, as
I was tellin' you about; 'e gave me a hidea or two,
and now s'mornin' we 'ave this very serious news
from Berlin."

MR BARKER'S FLAIR 49

" Papers 'ave to make the worst of everything,"
said Flack. " It's their livin'."

" Anyways," continued Gosling, " I put it quite
straight to the 'ouse this mornin', as we might do
worse under the circumstances than buy 'eavily. . . ."

" You did? " asked Flack, and he cocked up his
spectacles and looked at Gosling underneath them.

" I did," replied Gosling.

" What did Mr Barker say to that? " asked Flack.

" He took my advice."

" Lord's sakes, you don't tell me so? " said Flack,
his spectacles on his forehead.

" I'm now about to dictate various letters to our
'ouse in Dundee," replied Gosling, dropping his
voice to a whisper, and assuming an air of mysterious
importance, " advising them to send our Mr Stewart
to Vienna immediate, from where 'e is to proceed
to Berlin. 'E is, also, to 'ave private instructions
from the 'ouse as to the extent of 'is buyin' — which
I may tell you in confidence, Flack, will be enormous
— e-wormous." Gosling raised his head slowly on the
first syllable, brought it down with a jerk on the
second, and left the third largely to the imagination.

" But d'yer mean to tell me," expostulated Flack,
" as all this is on account of this plague? They been
usin' that as a blind, my boy."

Gosling laid a bunch of swollen fingers on his
colleague's arm. " I tell you, Flack, old boy," he
said, " that this is serious. When Mr Barker took up
my advice, as 'e did very quick, Mr Prince said,
1 You don't tell me as you really take this plague
serious, Barker? ' 'e said. And Mr Barker looked up

E

50 GOSLINGS

and says, " I'm goin' to put all my money on it.' '
Gosling paused and then repeated, " Mr Barker says
as 'e's goin' to put all our money on it, Flack."

" Lord's sakes ! " said Flack. Here, indeed, was an
argument strong enough to break down even his
consistent incredulity. " But d'yer mean to tell me,"
he persisted, " that Mr Barker thinks as it'll come
to England? "

" We-el, you know," returned Gosling, " we need
not, p'raps go quite so far as that. But it may go far
enough to interfere with European markets, there
may be trouble with quarantine, and such-like. ..."

" Ah, well, that," said Flack with an air of relief.
" Jus' so, jus' so. Mr Barker can see as far through a
brick wall as most people, and so I've always said."
He dropped his spectacles on to his nose again, and
returned to his interrupted accountancy.

Gosling went fussily into his own room and rang
for his typist — a competent and presentable young
woman, among whose duties that of turning her
superior's letters into equivalent English was not
the lightest.

3

GOSLING was very full of importance that day, and
during lunch he wore the air of a man who had secret
and valuable information. He was too well versed
in City methods and too loyal to his own house to
give any hint of Barker and Prince's speculations in
Austria and Germany; but when the subject of the
new plague inevitably came into the conversation,

MR BARKER'S FLAIR 51

he spoke with an authority that was heightened by
the hint of reserve implicit in his every diclum.

When the latest joke on the sub j eft, fresh from
the Stock Exchange, had been retailed by one of the
usual group of lunchers, and had been received with
the guffaws it merited, Gosling suddenly screwed
his face to an unaccustomed seriousness and said,
" But it's serious, you know, extremely serious."

And by degrees, from this and many other better
informed sources, the rumour ran through the City
that the new plague was serious, extremely serious.
That afternoon there was a slight drop of prices in
certain industrial shares, and a slight rise in wheat
and some other imported food stuffs; fluctuations
which could not be attributed to ordinary causes.
Mr Barker's foresight was justified once again in the
eyes of Gosling and Flack. Before five o'clock another
letter was posted to Dundee, enforcing haste.

In the bosom of his family that evening, Gosling
was a little pompous, and talked of economy. But
his wife and daughters, although they assumed an
air of interest, were quite convinced that the head
of the house in Wisteria Grove was making the most
of a rumour for his own purposes.

As Blanche said to Millie, later, father was always
finding some excuse for keeping them short of dress
money. That five pounds had proved inadequate
to supply even their immediate necessities, and they
were already meditating another attack.

" We simply must get another three pounds some-
how," said Millie. And Blanche quite agreed with
her.

E2

V— THE CLOSED DOOR

THERE was a lull for forty-eight hours after that
announcement of the case of the new plague in
Berlin, and Maxwell was beginning to regret his
headlines when the news began to come in, this time
in volume. The Russian censorship had broken down,
and the news agencies were suddenly flooded with
reports. There were several thousand cases of the
plague in Eastern Russia; the north and south were
affected, many men were dying in such towns as
Kharkov and Rostov; there were a dozen cases in
St Petersburg; there was a such a rush of reports
that it was quite impossible to distinguish between
those that were probably true and those that were
certainly false.

The morning papers gave as much space as they
could spare, and had even broken up some of the
matter dealing with the arrangements for the open-
ing of Parliament on that day. But the evening
papers had news that put all previous reports in the
shade. Eleven more cases were reported in Berlin
three in Hamburg, five in Prague and one in Vienna
But more important, more thrilling still, was the
news that H.I.H. the Grand Duke Kirylo, the Tsar's
younger brother, had died of the plague in Moscow,
and Professor Schlesinger in Berlin. Until that

52

THE CLOSED DOOR 53

startling announcement came, the English public
had incomprehensibly imagined that only peasants,
Chinamen and people of the lower social grades were
attacked by this strange new infection.

In the later editions it was reported on good
authority that Professor Schlesinger had been observ-
ing a sample of the blood of the first case of plague
that had been recognized in Berlin.

Nevertheless the majority of readers, after glanc-
ing through the obituary notices of H.I.H. the
Grand Duke Kirylo and of the world-famed bacterio-
logist, turned to the account — only slightly abbrevi-
ated— of the opening of Parliament. And in many
households the subject of the new plague gave place
to the fiercely controversial topic of the English
Church Disestablishment Bill, which had been
indicated in the King's Speech as a measure that was
to be introduced in the forthcoming session. Many
opponents of the Bill coupled the two chief items of
news and said that the plague was a warning against
infidelity. It may be assumed that they found
sufficient warrant for the killing of a few thousand
Russians, including a prince of the blood and a great
German scientist, in the acknowledged importance
of England among the nations. The death of half a
million or so Chinamen in the first instance had been
a delicate hint; now came the more urgent warning.
Who knew but that if this sacrilegious Bill were
passed, England herself might not be smitten.
When warnings are disregarded, judgments follow.
The Evangelicals found a weapon ready to their
hands. .

54 GOSLINGS

But what precisely was the nature of the new plague,
none of the journals was as yet able to say. The
symptoms had not as yet been " described " by any
medical authority, for it appeared that, contrary to
modern precedent, the doctor himself, despite all
precaucions, was peculiarly subject to infection. Out
of the eleven new cases in Berlin, no less than four
were medical men.

From the layman's point of view the symptoms
were briefly as follows : Firstly, violent pains at the
base of the skull, followed by a period of comparative
relief which lasted from two to five hours. Then,
a numbness in the extremities, followed by rapid
paralysis. Death ensued in from twenty-four to forty-
eight hours after the pains were first experienced.
No case, as yet, was known to have recovered. A well-
known physician in London gave it as his opinion
that the disease was a hitherto unknown form of
cerebro-spinal meningitis of unexampled virulence.
He protested that the word " plague " was a false
description, but that word had already been im-
pressed on the public mind, and the disease was
spoken of as the " new plague " until the end.

THE next morning all London was reading a heavily-
leaded article by Jasper Thrale. It appeared first
in the Daily Post, with the announcement that it
was not copyright, and all the evening papers took
it up, and some of them reprinted it in its entirety.

The article began by pointing out that in the
recent history of civilization Europe had been subject

THE CLOSED DOOR 55

to a long succession of pestilences. From the four-
teenth to the seventeenth centuries, wrote Thrale,
the Black Death, now commonly supposed to be a
form of the bubonic plague, was practically endemic
in England. In more recent times small-pox had been
responsible for enormous mortality among all classes,
and, in our own day, tuberculosis. In the two former
examples, Thrale pointed out, and in many other
diseases, infectious or contagious, or both, these
pestilences had gradually lost virulence. By the
elimination of those most susceptible to infection
and incapable to resist the onslaught of the disease,
and by the survival of those whose vitality was
strong enough either to resist attack or to achieve
recovery, mankind at last were gradually becoming
immune against certain infections which had pre-
vailed in the past. And in a greater or less degree this
immunity was without doubt being obtained against
a whole host of lesser ills. This comparative immunity,
in fact, was one of the means of man's evolution
towards a more perfect physical body.

" But let us consider for a moment," wrote
Thrale, " the appalling danger which threatens us
when we are attacked by a pestilence which is
entirely new to humanity; new, so far as we know,
to the world. In the middle of the fourteenth century
the Black Death is recorded in some places to have
killed two-thirds of the whole population, and, not-
withstanding the modern improvement in sanitation
and general hygiene, there is no inherent reason why
another pestilence may not appear, which may be
even more deadly. And we are faced at the present

56 GOSLINGS

moment with the awful threat that such a pestilence
has appeared, the pestilence commonly known as
the ' new plague.' There is no reason why we should
consider the appearance as without precedent in
history; there is no reason why we should regard its
coming as outside the laws of common probability;
finally, and most decisively, there is no reason why
England should not be smitten.

" According to report among the Chinese, this
f new plague ' has been spasmodically epidemic in
Tibet for more than a century. We have, as yet, no
certain facts upon which to base any hypothesis,
but is it not credible that during that time some
bacterium or bacillus — hitherto harmlessly parasitic,
perhaps, in the blood of lower animals — has changed
its life habit ? In the isolated and sparsely inhabited
regions of Tibet, it is possible that for many thousand
years the assumed bacterium was never bred in the
blood of man; it is possible that when it first found
a new host it was comparatively harmless to him,
but within a hundred years it may have become so
altered by new conditions that it has developed into
what is practically a new species. If these theories
are relatively true, it is not unlikely that this new
bacterium is working out its own destruction by the
destruction of its hosts. It may be that it is one of
those blind alleys of evolution which reach a certain
stage of development and then disappear. But mean-
while what of mankind? We know so little of the
history of microscopic life. There is a whole world of
evolution in process of which we have no conception,
and at this stage, whether my hypothesis be a possible

THE CLOSED DOOR 57

one or not, we are at least sure that an unknown
organism — animal or vegetable — has become visible
to us in its effects and may alter the whole history of
mankind.

" I lay stress on these aspects, because we are so
hide-bound, so restricted, so conventional in our
ideas that we assume, without thought, that the
process of life as we know of it from a few thousand
years of history can never be interrupted. In our
few years of individual existence we become accus-
tomed to certain apparent laws of cause and effecl:,
and will not believe that there can be any exception
to those assumed laws. But, now, in the face of
recent evidence, it is absolutely essential that we
should realize instantly and practically that we are
threatened with a new factor in life, which imperils
the whole human race. It is no longer safe to comfort
ourselves with the belief — begotten of our vanity —
that the world was necessarily made for man. It
behoves us to take measures for our protection with-
out delay, to undertake our own cause and trust no
longer in any beneficent Providence that works
always for our ultimate benefit.

" These measures of protection are clearly indi-
cated. We must close our doors against the invasion
of the plague. Quarantine will not protect us; we
must have no traffic with Europe until the danger
is past. By the happy accident of our position we
can become isolated from the rest of the world. We
must close our doors before it is too late."

58 GOSLINGS

3

IF the people had not been seriously scared by the
sudden irruption of news on the day preceding that
on which this article was published, they would
have ignored Thrale's hyperboles — or laughed. But,
caught in a moment of agitation and fear, a certain
section of the crowd took up Thrale's suggestion,
talked about the " closed door," held meetings, and
started propaganda. The Press, with its genius for
appreciating and following public opinion, also took
up the suggestion, and was automatically divided
into two sections, recognizable as Liberal and Con-
servative.

The Times took command of the situation with
a leader, in which Thrale's argument was pounded,
rather than picked, to pieces; but the Daily Mail
produced more effect with two special articles con-
tributed, one by a bacteriologist, the other by a pro-
fessor of economics. The first had little weight — all
argument under that head was as yet founded on
the most uncertain hypotheses. The second was so
convincing that the less ardent supporters of the
" closed door " policy were shaken in their con-
victions.

The writer of the economic article pointed out
that an England with closed doors could not feed
herself for a month. He was scrupulously fair in his
argument, and was at great pains to show that even
if preparation was instantly made to lay in large
stores of grain from Canada, tinned meats from
America, and food-stuffs generally from the many

THE CLOSED DOOR 59

places which were as yet free from any taint of
plague, it would still be impossible to provide for
more than a three months' isolation. Then, leaving
this aspect of the question, he went on to show in
detail that even if the food could be supplied, the
practical cessation of our enormous foreign trade
would mean the destruction of England's commerce,
and he wound up with an earnest exhortation to
the country at large, warning the people to beware
of scaremongers, pessimists, and opportunists who
had their own ends to serve, and cared nothing for
the general welfare. It was an excellent article in
every way; quite one of the best that the Daily Mail
had ever published. And as this, too, was declared
free of any copyright restrictions, it was largely
circulated.

The Daily Post replied next morning by pointing
out that the celebrated professor of economics was
nullifying all his own previous utterances on the
case for Tariff Reform, but that retort carried little
weight. No one cared if the professor contradicted
himself; anyone, except the faddists, could see that
the argument of the article was sound, in fact incon-
trovertible. What had to be done was to put pressure
on the Local Government Board. It was true that
the Daily Post, the semi-official organ of the Govern-
ment, affirmed that the Board in question was alert
and active, but that announcement was regarded
as a cliche; what was wanted were particulars of
the preventive measures that were being taken.

The members of the great Gosling family, in
offices, warehouses and shops followed the line of

60 GOSLINGS

least resistance, while making some assertion of their
rights as citizens.

George Gosling's arguments with his crony Flack
were excellently representative.

" What yer think of this ' closed door ' business? "
asked Flack.

" Goin' a bit too far, in my opinion," returned
Gosling judicially.

Flack's natural incredulity had inclined him in
the same direction, but his colleague's certainty
swung him round at once.

" I ain't so sure o' that," he said. " Looks to me
as things is going pretty bad."

" Bad enough, I grant you," returned Gosling.
" But there isn't no need for us to lose our 'eads over
it. Take it all round, you know, it's pretty certain as
things isn't as bad as is made out, whereas, on the
other 'and, the ' closed door ' policy'd mean ruin
and starvation for 'undreds of thousands — there's
no gettin' round that."

" Better a few 'undred thousands than the 'ole
male population," said Flack.

" If it come to that, but it won't; no fear, not by
a long chalk, it won't," replied Gosling. " What's
got to be done is to get the Local Government Board
to work. We've got to 'ave a regular system o'
quarantine established, that's what we've got to
'ave."

It did, indeed, appear the most practical form of
prevention at the moment; it is hard to see what
other measures could have been adopted. The sup-
porters of the " closed door " policy soon began to

THE CLOSED DOOR 61

lose adherents. The scheme was obviously alarmist,
far-fetched and utterly impracticable. . . .

4

THROUGH February and the early part of March
the plague spread through Central Europe, but not
with an alarming rapidity.

In the second week of March, Berlin was reporting
a weekly roll of over five hundred deaths attributable
to this cause, and Vienna was second with between
four and five hundred. In St Petersburg and Moscow
the figures were no higher, and there were as yet
comparatively few cases in France, and none in Spain
or Portugal.

Many authorities were of opinion that the mor-
tality had reached the maximum, and that the plague
would work itself out in the course of a few more
weeks. Moreover it appeared that the early reports
of the highly infectious character of the plague must
have been grossly exaggerated, for as yet there had
been not a single case in the British Isles despite the
enormous traffic between England and the Continent .
It is true that the strictest quarantine had been
established — it had been ascertained that the period
of gestation of the germ was about fifty hours — but
not one single case had so far been detained in
quarantine ships or hospitals. It was argued from this
that the plague was not infectious at all in the ordin-
ary sense, and only mildly contagious; that it
flourished in certain centres and was not easily
transferable from one centre to another.

The only aspect of the thing that was seriously

62 GOSLINGS

alarming was the horrible mortality among doctors
and the specialists who were endeavouring to recog-
nize and isolate the characteristic germ of the disease.
Nine English experts who had dared martyrdom
in the cause of science had gone to Berlin to make
investigations, and not one of them had returned
As a consequence of this strange susceptibility of the
investigator, whether medical man or bacteriologist,
there was still an extraordinary ignorance of the
general nature and action of the disease.

Nevertheless, despite this one intimidating aspect
of the plague, the general attitude in the middle of
March was that the quarantine arrangements were
enormously impeding trade and should be relaxed
The foreign governments were alive to the serious-
ness of the scourge, and were doing all in their power
to prevent infection. There had been a scare, but
people were calm again, now, and able to realize
the extent of the earlier exaggerations.

The Government passed the second reading of
the English Church Disestablishment Bill by a
majority of nineteen, before the Easter recess, and
the Goslings, who had grown used to the plague,
whose chief attitude towards it was that it was an
infernal nuisance which interfered with trade,
turned their attention gladly to the new topic; they
all thought that a general election at that moment
would result in an overwhelming Conservative
majority. And as the Liberals had been in power for
more than ten years, that eventuality was regarded
with complacency.

But at this critical moment — to the joy of the
Evangelicals — the new plague^set to work in earnest.

VI— DISASTER

RUSSIA was smitten. Once more communication was
cut off from Moscow, this time by a different agent
The work of the city was paralysed. Men were falling
dead in the street, and there were only women to
bury them. A wholesale emigration had begun. The
roads were choked with people on foot and in
carriages, for the trains had ceased to run.

The news filtered in by degrees : it was confirmed,
contradicted and definitely confirmed again every
few hours.

Then came final confirmation, with the news that
something approaching war had broken out — a war
of defence. Germany had sent troops to the frontier
to stem the tide of emigrants from smitten Russia
and Poland; and Austria-Hungary was following her
example.

Parliament re-assembled before the Easter recess
had expired. The time for more drastic measures
had come, and the Premier explained to the House
that it was proposed to bring in a Bill immediately
to cut off communication with Europe.

There can be no doubt that England was now
badly scared, but centuries of protection had estab-
lished a belief in security which was not easily shaken.

The enthusiasts for the " closed door " policy

64 GOSLINGS

found plenty of recruits, but on the other side there
was a solid body of opinion which maintained that
the danger was grossly exaggerated. And when the
Evening Chronicle came out with a long leader and
a backing of expert opinion, to prove that the
"Closed Door" Bill — as it was commonly called — was
a dodge of the Government's in order to retain office,
a well-marked reaction followed against the last and
terrible step of cutting off all communication with
Europe; and the Conservative party was joined by
some avowed Liberals who had personal interests to
consider in this connexion.

In committee-rooms, members of the Opposition
were inclined to be jubilant: " If we can throw out
the Government on this Bill we shall simply sweep
the country ... all the manufacturers in the North
will be with us ... even Scotland, most likely ... we
should come back with a record majority. . . ."

The prospects were so magnificent that there could
be no hesitation in making a party question of the
Bill.

No time was to be lost, for the Bill was to be
rushed, it was an emergency measure, and it was
proposed that it should become law within four days.
Preparations were already in hand to carry out the
provisions enacted.

An urgent rally of the Opposition was made, and
when the Bill came up for the second reading the
Premier addressed a well-filled House. The House
was not crowded because a large number of people,
including many members of Parliament, were on
their way to America. All the big liners were packed

DISASTER 65

on their outward voyage and were returning, con-
trary to all precedent, in ballast — this ballast was
exclusively food-stuffs.

The Premier introduced the Bill in a speech which
was remarkable for its sincerity and earnestness. He
outlined the arrangements that were being made to
feed the community, and showed clearly that while
communication remained open with America, there
was no fear of any serious shortage. Pausing for a
moment on this question of intercourse with
America, he made a point of the fa 61 that American
ports were already closed to emigrants from all
European countries with the one exception of Great
Britain, and that if a single case of plague were
reported in these islands the difficulties of obtaining
food-stuffs from America and the Colonies would be
enormously increased. He wound up by almost
imploring the House not to make a party question
of so urgent and necessary a measure at a time when
the safety of England was so terribly threatened. He
pleaded that at this critical moment, unparalleled
in the history of humanity, it was the duty of every
man to sink his own personal interests, to be ready
to make any sacrifice, for the sake of the com-
munity.

Mr Brampton, the leader of the Opposition, then
completely destroyed the undoubted effect which
had been made upon the House. He did not openly
speak in a party spirit, but he hinted very plainly
that the Bill under consideration was a mere subter-
fuge to win votes. He poured contempt upon the
fear of the plague, which he characterized through-

66 GOSLINGS

out as the " Russian epidemic," and ended with the
advice to keep a cool head, to preserve the British
spirit of sturdy resistance instead of shutting our
doors and bringing the country to commercial ruin.
" Are we all cravens," he concluded, " scurrying like
rabbits to our burrows at the first hint of alarm? "

The further debate, although lengthy, had com-
paratively little influence; the House divided, and
the Government was defeated by a majority of nine.

THE news was all over the country by ten o'clock
that night, and it was noticeable that a large per-
centage of the younger generation still regarded the
danger as " rather a lark." This threat of the plague
held a promise of high adventure; youth can only
realize the possibility of death in its relation to
others.

" I say, if this bally old plague did come "... re-
marked a young man of twenty-two, who was sitting
with a friend in the little private bar of the " Dun
Taw " Hotel.

His friend drew his feet up on to the rungs of his
tall stool and winked at the barmaid.

" Well, go on. What if it did? " remarked that
young woman.

The young man considered for a moment and
then said: " Those that got left would have a rare
old time."

" It's the women as'd get left, seems to me,"
replied the barmaid, and scored a point.

DISASTER 67

" I say, surely you don't come from this part of
the world? " was the compliment evoked by her wit.

" Not me! " was the answer, " I'm a Londoner,
I am. Only started yesterday, and sha'n't stay long
if to-day's a fair sample. There 'asn't been a dozen
customers in all day, and they were in such a 'urry
to get their tonic and go that I'm sure they couldn't
'ave told you whether me 'air was black or ches'nut."

Both men immediately looked at the crown of
pretty fair hair which had been so churlishly slighted.

" First thing I noticed about you," said one.

The other, who had hardly spoken before, took
the cigarette out of his mouth and remarked : " You
can never get that colour with peroxide."

The barmaid looked a little suspicious.

"Oh, he means it all right, kid," put in the younger
man quickly. " Dicky's one of the serious sort. Be-
sides, he's in that line; travels for a firm of wholesale
chemists."

Dicky nodded gravely. " I could see at once it was
natural," he remarked with the air of an expert.

" Ah ! you're one of them that keeps their eyes
open," returned the barmaid approvingly, and Dicky
modestly acknowledged the compliment by saying
that his business necessitated close observation.

" Most men are as blind as bats," continued the
barmaid, and the examples she gave from her own
experience led to an absorbing conversation, which
was presently interrupted by the shriek of the swing
door.

The new-comer was a small, fair man with a neatly
waxed moustache. He came up to the counter with

F2

68 GOSLINGS

the air of an habitue, and remarked, " Hallo!
where's Cis? You're new here, aren't you? "

The barmaid, recognizing the marks of a regular
customer, quietly admitted that this was only her
second day at the " Dun Taw."

" I've been away for two months," explained the
fair man, and ordered " Scotch." He was evidently
in the mood for company, for he brought up a stool
and, sitting a little way back from the bar, he began
to address his three hearers at large.

" Only came back from Europe this evening,"
he said, " and glad to be home, I assure you."
He raised his left hand with a gesture intended
to convey horror, and drank half his whisky at
a gulp.

Dicky turned to give his serious attention to the
narrative which was plainly to follow, and somewhat
ostentatiously observed the details of the new-comer's
dress. Dicky had a new-found reputation to main-
tain. His friend looked bored and a little sulky, and
tried to continue his conversation with the barmaid,
but that young woman, appreciating the difference
in value between a casual and a regular customer,
passed a broad hint by with a smile and said:
" Europe? Just fancy! "

" It's a place to get out of, I assure you," said the
fair man. " I've been over there for two months —
Germany and Austria chiefly — but for the last
fortnight I've been wasting my time. There's no-
thing doing."

" Isn't there? " commented Dicky with great
seriousness.

DISASTER 69

" Oh, we're sick to death of this bally plague," put
in the other young man quickly. " There's been
simply nothing else in the papers for the last I don't
know how long. I want to forget it."

The fair man reached forward and put down his
empty glass on the bar counter. " Same again, Miss,"
he said, and then: "We'll all be more sick of the
plague before we've finished with it. It's a terror.
If I was to tell you a few of the things I've seen in
the past fortnight, I don't suppose you'd believe
me."

" That's all right; I'd believe you quick enough,"
returned the young man. " Point is, what's the good
of getting yourself in a funk about it? Personally I
don't believe it's coming to England. If it was it
would have been here before this. What I say is . . ."

His pronouncement of opinion ceased abruptly.
The fair man's behaviour riveted attention. He was
gazing past the barmaid at the orderly rows of shin-
ing glasses and various shaped bottles behind her.
His mouth was open. He gazed intensely, horribly.

The barmaid backed nervously and looked over
her shoulder. The two young men hastily rose and
pushed back their stools. The same thought was in
all their minds. This neat, fair man was on the verge
of delirium tremens.

In a moment the air of intercourse and joviality
that had pervaded the little room was dissipated;
in place of it had come shocked surprise and
fear.

There was an interval of slow desolating silence,
and then the convulsive grip of the fair man

yo GOSLINGS

shattered the glass he held, and the fragments fell
tinkling to the floor.

" I say, what's up? " stammered the barmaid's
admirer, while the barmaid herself shrank back
against the shelves and watched nervously. She had
had experience.

The fair man's head was being pulled slowly back-
wards by some invisible force. His eyes, staring straight
before him, appeared to watch with fierce intensity
some point that moved steadily up the wall of shelves
behind the counter; up till it reached the ceiling
and began to move over the ceiling toward him.

Then, quite suddenly, the horrible tension was
relaxed; his head fell loosely forward and he clapped
both hands to the nape of his neck. He was breathing
loudly in short quick gasps.

" I say, do you think he's ill? " asked the young
man. At the suggestion Dicky made a step towards
the sufferer; his knowledge of chemistry gave him a
professional air.

" He's come from Europe. . . . Suppose it's the
plague," whispered the barmaid.

And at that the two young men started back. As
the words were spoken realization swept upon them.

Mumbling something about " get a doctor," they
rushed for the door. One of them made a wide detour
— he had to pass the man who sat doubled forward
in his chair, frantically gripping the base of his skull.

Hardly had the clatter of the swing door subsided
before he fell forward on to the floor. He was groan-
ing now, groaning detestably.

The barmaid whimpered and stared. " Women

DISASTER 71

don't get it." she said aloud. But she kept to her
own side of the counter.

Later the owner of the " Dun Taw " identified
the fair man — from a distance — as Mr Stewart, of
the firm of Barker and Prince.

TH RALE'S " higher forces " had shown their hand.

The humble and rotund instrument of their choice
had served his purpose, and he was probably the
first man in London to receive the news — a delicate
acknowledgment, perhaps, of his services.

The telegram was addressed to the firm, but as
neither of the heads of the house had arrived,
Gosling opened it according to precedent.

" Gosh! " was his sole exclamation, but the tone
of it stirred the interest of Flack, who turned to see
his colleague's rather protuberant blue eyes staring
with a fishy glare at a flimsy sheet of paper which
visibly trembled in the hold of two clusters of fat
fingers.

Flack lifted his spectacles and holding them on a
level with his eyebrows, said, " Bad news? "

Gosling sat down, and in the fever of the moment
wiped his forehead with his snuff handkerchief, then
discovered his mistake and laid the handkerchief
carelessly on the desk. This infringement of his
invariable practice produced even more effect upon
Flack than the staring eyes and wavering fingers.
Gosling might be guilty of mild histrionics, but not
of such a touch as this. The utter neglect of decency

72 GOSLINGS

exhibited by the display of that shameful bandanna
could only portend calamity.

" Lord's sakes, man, what's the matter? " asked
Flack, still taking an observation under his spectacles.

" It's come, Flack," said Gosling feebly. " It's in
Scotland. Our Mr Stewart died of it in Dundee this
mornin'."

Flack rose from his seat and grabbed the telegram,
which was brief and pregnant. " Stewart died sud-
denly five a.m. Feared plague. Macfie."

"Tchah!" said Flack, still staring at the tele-
gram. " ' Feared plague.' Lost their 'eads, that's
what they've done. Pull yourself together, man. I
don't believe a word of it."

Gosling swallowed elaborately, discovered his
bandanna on the desk and hastily pocketed it.
"Might 'a been 'eart-disease, d'you think?" he said
eagerly.

" We-el," remarked Flack, " I never 'card as 'is
'eart was affe6ted, did you? "

Gosling held out his hand for the telegram, and
made a further elaborate study of it, without, how-
ever, discovering any hitherto unsuspected evidence
relating to the unsoundness of Stewart's heart.

" It says ' feared,' of course," he remarked at last.
"Macfie wouldn't have said feared if 'e'd been sure."

" They'd 'ardly have mentioned plague in a
telegram if they 'adn't been pretty certain, though,"
argued Flack.

Gosling was so upset that he had to go out and
get a nip of brandy, a thing he had not done since
the morning after Blanche was born.

DISASTER 73

The partners looked grave when they heard the
news from Dundee, and London generally looked
very grave indeed, when they read the full details
an hour later in the Evening Chronicle.

Stewart, it appeared, had come straight through
from Berlin to London via Flushing and Port
Victoria, and on landing in England he had managed
to escape quarantine. His was not an isolated case.
For some weeks it had been possible for British
subjects to get past the officials. There was nothing
in the regulations to allow such an evasion of the
order, but it could be managed occasionally. Stewart
had been told to spare no expense.

The Evening Chronicle, although it made the most
of its opportunity in contents bill and headlines,
said that there was no cause for alarm, that these
things were managed better in Great Britain than
on the Continent; that the case had been isolated
from the first moment the plague was recognized
(about five hours before death), that the body had
been burned, and that the most extensive and
elaborate process of disinfection was being carried
out — even the sleeping coach in which Stewart had
travelled from London to Dundee twelve hours
before, had been identified and burned also.

London still looked grave, but was nevertheless a
little inclined to congratulate itself on the thorough-
ness of British methods. " We'll never get it in
England, you see if we do," was the remark chiefly
in vogue among the great Gosling family.

But twelve hours or so too late, England was
beginning to regret that the Government had been

74 GOSLINGS

defeated. It was rumoured that the Premier had
broken down, had immediately resigned his office,
and would not seek re-election as a private member.
This rumour was definitely confirmed in the later
editions of the evening papers. Mr Brampton had
been summoned to Buckingham Palace and was
forming a temporary ministry which was to take
office. In the circumstances it was deemed inadvis-
able to plunge the country into a general election
at that moment.

MR STEWART died in the small hours of Friday
morning, and the next day, Saturday, the I4th of
April, was the first day of panic.

The day began with comparative quiet. No further
case had been notified in Great Britain, but tele-
graphic communication was interrupted between
London and Russia, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and
other continental centres. In Germany matters were
growing desperate. There had been riots and looting.
Military law had been declared in several towns; in
some cases the mob had been fired upon. Business
was at a standstill, and the plague was spreading like
a fire. Between two and three hundred cases were
reported from Reims, and upwards of fifty from
Paris. . . .

Business houses were being closed in the City of
London, and the banks noted a marked tendency
among their depositors to withdraw gold; so
marked, indeed, that many banks of high stand-

DISASTER 75

ing were glad to be able to close their doors at
one o'clock.

It was on this Saturday morning, also, that the
bottom suddenly fell out of the money market. For
weeks past, prices had been falling steadily, but now
they dropped to panic figures. Every one was selling,
there were no buyers left. Consols were quoted

at 53J-

The air of London was heavy with foreboding,
and throughout the morning the gloom grew deeper.
The depressed and worried faces to be met at every
turn contrasted strangely with the brilliance of the
weather. For April had come with clear skies and
soft, warm winds.

As the day advanced the atmosphere of depression
became continually more marked, and how extra-
ordinary was the effect upon all classes may be
judged from the fact that less than 5,000 people
paid to witness the third replay between Barnsley
andEverton, in the semi-final of the English cup. . . .

In London, men and women hung aimlessly
about the streets waiting for the news they dreaded
to hear. The theatres were deserted. The feeling
of gloom was so real that many women afterwards
believed that the sky had been overcast, whereas
Nature was in one of her most brilliant moods.

It was a few minutes past three when the pressure
was exploded by the report of the final catastrophe.
" Two more cases of plague in Dundee and one in
Edinburgh," was the first announcement. That
would have been enough to show that all the
vaunted precautions had been useless, and within

76 GOSLINGS

an hour came the notification of two further
cases. Before six o'clock, eight more were notified
in Dundee, three more in Edinburgh, and one in
Newcastle.

The new plague had reached England. It was
then that the panic began.

VII— PANIC

GURNET, when he left his office on that Saturday,
was influenced by the general depression. He
went to lunch at the " White Vine," in the Hay-
market, quite determined to keep himself in hand,
to argue himself out of his low spirits.

He made a beginning at once.

" Every one seems to have a fit of the blues.
Ernst," he remarked to the waiter with a factitious
cheerfulness.

Ernst, less polite than usual, shrugged his
shoulders. " There is enough cause already," he
said.

" Have you had bad news from Germany? "
asked Gurney, feeling that he had probably been
rather brutal.

" Ach Gott! 's'ist bald Keiner mehr da," blub-
bered Ernst, and he wept without restraint as he
arranged the table, occasionally wiping his eyes
with his napkin.

" I'm most awfully sorry," murmured the em-
barrassed Gurney, and retreated behind the horror
of his evening paper. He found small cause for
rejoicing there, however, and discarded it as soon
as his lunch had been brought by the red-eyed
Ernst.

77

78 GOSLINGS

" I wonder what Mark Tapley would have done,"
Gurney reflected moodily as he attacked his chop.

There were few other people in the restaurant,
and they were all silent and engrossed. That dread-
ful cloud hung over England, the spirit of pestilence
threatened to take substance, the air was full of
horror that might at any moment become a visible
shape of destruction.

Gurney did not finish his lunch, he lighted a
cigarette, left four shillings on the table, and
hurried out into the air.

He did not look up at the sky as he turned east-
wards towards Fleet Street; no one looked up at
the sky that afternoon. Heads and shoulders were
burdened by an invisible weight which kept ah1 eyes
on the ground.

Fleet Street was full of people who crowded
round the windows of newspaper offices, not with
the eagerness of a general election crowd, but with
a subdued surliness which ever and again broke out
in spurts of violent temper.

Gurney, still struggling to maintain his com-
posure, found himself unreasonably irritated when
a motor-bus driver shouted at him to get out of the
way. It seemed to Gurney that to be knocked down
and run over was preferable to being shouted
at. The noise of those infernal buses was unbear-
able, so, also, was that dreadful patter of feet upon
the pavement and the dull murmur of mournful
voices. Why, in the name of God, could not people
keep quiet?

He bumped into some one on the pavement as he

PANIC 79

scrambled out of the way of the bus, and the man
swore at him viciously. Gurney responded, and then
discovered that the man was known to him.

"Hallo!" he said. "You?"

" Hallo," responded the other.

For a moment they stood awkwardly, staring;
then Gurney said, " Any more news? "

The man, who was a sub-editor of the West-
minster Gazette, shook his head. " I'm just going
back now," he said. " There was nothing ten
minutes ago."

" Pretty awful, isn't it? " remarked Gurney.

The sub-editor shrugged his shoulders and hurried
away.

Presently Gurney found himself wedged among
the crowd, watching the Daily Chronicle window.

A few minutes after three, a young man with a
very white face, fastened a type-written message
to the glass.

There was a rapid constriction of the crowd.
Those behind, Gurney among them, could not
read the message, and pressed forward. There were
cries of " What is it ? ... I can't see. . . . Read it
out. . . ." Then those in front gave way slightly,
a wave of eagerness agitated the mass of watchers,
and the news ran back from the front. " Two more
cases of plague in Dundee; one in Edinburgh."

And with that the pressure of dread was suddenly
dissipated, giving place to something kinetic, dyna-
mic. Now it was fear that took the people by the
throat : active, compelling fear. Men looked at each
other with terror and something of hate in their

8o GOSLINGS

eyes, the crowd broke and melted. Every man was
going to his own home, possessed by an instinct to
fly before it was too late.

Gurney shouldered his way out, and stopped a
taxi that was crawling past.

" Jermyn Street," he said.

The driver leaned over and pointed to the Daily
Chronicle window. " What's the news? " he asked.

" The plague's in Dundee and Edinburgh,"
said Gurney, and climbed into the cab and slammed
the door.

" Gawd! " muttered the driver, as he drove reck-
lessly westwards.

Sitting in the cab, finding some comfort in the feel-
ing of headlong speed, Gurney was debating whether
he would not charter the man to take him right out
of London. But he must go home first for money.

At the door of the house in Jermyn Street he
met Jasper Thrale.

" HAVE you heard? " asked Gurney excitedly.

" No. What? " said Thrale, without interest.

" There are two more cases in Dundee and one
in Edinburgh," said Gurney. The driver of the cab
got down from his seat, and looked from Gurney to
Thrale with doubt and question.

Thrale nodded his head. " I knew it was sure to
come," he remarked.

" Better get out of this," put in the driver.

" Yes, rather," agreed Gurney.

" Where to? " asked Thrale. '

PANIC 81

" Well, America."

Thrale laughed. " They'll have it in America
before you get there," he said. " It'll go there via
Japan and 'Frisco."

" You seem to know a lot about it," said the driver
of the cab.

" Do you mean to tell me there's nowhere we can
go to? " persisted Gurney.

Thrale smiled. " Nowhere in this world," he
said. " This plague has come to destroy mankind."
He spoke with a quiet assurance that carried con-
viction.

The driver of the cab scowled. " May as well
'ave a run for my money first, then," he said, and
thus gave utterance to the thought that was fer-
menting in many other minds.

There was no hope of escape for the mass, only
the rich could seek railway termini and take train
for Liverpool, Southampton or any port where
there was the least hope of finding some ship to
take them out of Europe.

That night there was panic and riot. The wealthy
classes were trying to escape, the mob was trying
to " get a run for its money." Yet very little real
mischief was done. Two or three companies of
infantry were sufficient to clear the streets, and
not more than forty people in all were seriously
injured. . . .

In Downing Street the new Premier sat alone
with his head in his hands, and wondered what
could be done to stop the approach of the pestil-
ence. One of the evening papers had suggested that

82 GOSLINGS

a great line of fire should be built across the north
of England. The Premier wondered whether that
scheme were feasible. He had never held high office
before; he did not know how to deal with these
great issues. All his political life he had learned only
the art of party tactics. He had learned that art
very well, he was a master of debate, and he had
shown a wonderful ability to judge the bent of the
public mind and to make use of his judgments
for party ends. But now that any action of his
was divorced from its accustomed object, he was
as a man suddenly forced into some new occupation.
Whenever he tried to think of some means to stay
the progress of the plague his mind automatically
began to consider what influence the adoption of
such means would have upon the general election
which must soon come. . . .

" A line of fire across the north," he was thinking,
" would shut off the whole of Scotland. They
would never forgive us for that. We should lose
the entire Scottish vote — it's bad enough as it is."
He sat up late into the night considering what
policy he should put before the Cabinet. He tried
honestly to consider the position apart from poli-
tics, but his mind refused to work in that way. . . .

IN Jermyn Street Thrale was arguing with Gurney,
trying to persuade him into a philosophic attitude
" Yes, I suppose there's absolutely nothing to be
done but sit down and wait," said Gurney.

PANIC 83

" Personally," returned Thrale, " I have no
intention of spending my time flying from country
to country like a marked criminal. That way leads
to insanity. I've seen men become animals before now
under the influence of fear."

" Yes, of course, you're quite right," agreed
Gurney. " One must exercise self-control. After all,
it's only death, and not such a terrible death at
that." He got up and began to pace the room rest-
lessly, then went to the window and looked out.
Jermyn Street was almost deserted, but distant
sounds of shouting came from the direction of
Piccadilly. He left the window open and turned back
into the room.

" It's so infernally hard just to sit still and wait,"
he said. " If only one could do something."

" I doubt, now," said Thrale, quietly, " whether
one could ever have done anything. The public and
the Government took my warnings in the charac-
teristic way, the only possible way in which you
could expect twentieth-century humanity to take
a warning — a thrill of fear, perhaps, in some cases;
frank incredulity in others; but no result either way
that endured for an hour. . . . Belief in national
and personal security, inertia outside the routine
of necessary, stereotyped employment; these things
are essential to the running of the machine."

" I suppose they are," agreed Gurney absently
He had sat down again and was sucking auto-
matically at an extinguished pipe.

" In a complex civilization," went on Thrale
" any initiative on the part of the individual out-

G2

84 GOSLINGS

side his own tiny sphere of energy is just so much
grit in the machine. There are recognized methods,
they may not be the best, the most efficient, but
they are accepted and understood. Every clerk who
has to calculate twelve pence to the shilling knows
how his work would be lightened if he had only to
calculate ten, but he accepts that difficulty, because
he can do nothing as an individual to introduce the
decimal system. And that spirit of acceptance grows
upon him until the individual has the characteristics
of the class. Only when a man is stirred by too great
discomfort does he open his eyes to the possibility
of initiative; then come labour strikes. If labour
had a sufficiency of ease and comfort, if its lot were
not so violently contrasted with that of even the
middle-classes, labour would settle down to com-
placency. But the contrast is too great, and to attain
that complacency of uninitiative we must level
down. That was coming; that would have come if
this plague. . . ."

" What was that? " asked Gurney excitedly,
jumping to his feet. " Did you hear firing? " He
went to the window again, and leaned out. From
Piccadilly came the sound of an army of trampling
feet, of confused cries and shouting. " By God,
there's a riot," exclaimed Gurney. He spoke over
his shoulder.

Thrale joined him at the window. " Panic,"
he said. " Senseless, hysterical panic. It won't
last."

" I think I shall go out of London," said Gurney.
" I'd sooner ... I'd sooner die in the country, I

PANIC 85

think." He withdrew from the window and began
to pace up and down the room again.

" Going to stampede with the rest of 'em? "
asked Thrale. " Extraordinarily infectious thing,
panic."

" I don't think it's that exactly ..." hesitated
Gurney.

" Animal fear," said Thrale. " The terror of the
wild thing threatened with the unknown. The
runaway horse terrified and rushing to its own
destruction. Fly, fly, fly from the threat of peril
as you did once on the prairies, when to fly meant
safety."

" It's so infernally depressing in London," said
Gurney.

" All right, go and brood on death in the coun-
try," replied Thrale. " That may cheer you up a
bit. But, take my advice, don't run. Walk at a snail's
pace and check the least tendency to hurry. Once
you begin to quicken your pace, you will find your-
self hurrying desperately — and then stampede
the hell of terror at your heels. After all, you know,
you may survive. It isn't likely that every man will die."

Gurney caught eagerly at that. " No, no, of
course it isn't," he said. " But wouldn't one be
much more likely to survive if one were living in
the country, or by the sea — in some fairly isolated
place, for example. I meant to go down to Cornwall
for my holiday this year, to a little cottage on the
coast about four miles from Padstow; don't you think
in pure air and healthy surroundings like that, one
would stand a better chance? "

86 GOSLINGS

" Very likely," said Thrale carelessly. " But
don't run. In any case you'd better wait till the
middle of the week. The first rush will be over
then."

" Yes. Perhaps. I'll go on Wednesday, or Tues-
day. . . ."

Thrale smiled grimly. "Well, good night," he
said. " I'm going to bed."

When he had gone, Gurney went to the window
again. The sounds of riot from Piccadilly had died
down to a low, confused murmur. A motor-car
whizzed by along Jermyn Street, and two people
passed on foot, a man and a woman; the woman was
leaning heavily on the man's arm.

Gurney turned once more to his pacing of the
room. He was trying to realize the unrealizable
f act that the world offered no refuge . For a full
hour he struggled with himself, with that new,
strange instinct which rose up and urged him to
fly for his life. At last weary and overborne he
threw himself into a chair by the dying fire and
began to cry like a lost child; even as Ernst, the
waiter, had cried. . . .

THE panic emigration lasted until Monday even-
ing, and then came news which checked and stayed
the rush for the ports of Liverpool, Southampton
and Queenstown. The plague was already in
America. It had come, as Thrale had prophesied
from the West. At the docks many of those favoured

PANIC 87

emigrants who had secured berths, hesitated; if it
was to be a choice between death in America and
death in England, they preferred to die at home.

Yet, even on Tuesday morning, when doubt as
to the coming of the plague was no longer possible,
when Dundee could only give approximate figures
of the seizures in that town, reporting them as not
less than a thousand, when it was evident that the
whole of Scotland was becoming infected with in-
credible rapidity, and two cases were notified as
far south as Durham, there remained still an enor-
mous body of people who stoutly maintained that,
bad as things were, the danger was grossly ex-
aggerated, who believed that the danger would soon
pass, and who, steadfast to the habits of a lifetime,
continued their routine wherever it was possible so
to do, determined to resist to the last.

To this body, possibly some two-fifths of the whole
urban population, was due the comparative main-
tenance of law and order. In face of the growing
destitution due to the wholesale closing of factories,
warehouses and offices, necessitated by the now
complete cessation of foreign trade and to the
hoarding of food stores and gold which was already
so marked as to have seriously affected the commerce
not dependent on foreign sellers and buyers, a
semblance of ordinary life was still maintained.
Newspapers were issued, trains and 'buses were
running, theatres and music-halls were open, and
many normal occupations were carried on.

Yet everything was infected. It was as if the cloak
of civilization was worn more loosely. Crime was

88 GOSLINGS

increasing and justice was relaxed. Robberies of
food were so common that there was no place for
the confinement of those who were convicted.
Shopkeepers were becoming at once more reliant
upon their own defences, and less scrupulous in their
dealings with bona-fide customers. No longer could
the protection of the State be exclusively relied
upon, the citizen was becoming lost in the indivi-
dual. Public opinion was being resolved into in-
dividual opinion; and with the failing of the great
restraint every man was developing an unsuspected
side of his character. Thrown upon his own resources,
he became continually less civilized, more conscious
of possibilities to fulfill long-thwarted tendencies
and desires; he began to understand that when it
is a case of sauve qui pent, the weakest are trampled
under foot.

So the cloak of civilization gaped and showed the
form of the naked man, with all its blemishes and
deformities. And women blenched and shuddered.
For woman, as yet, was little, if at all, altered in
character by the fear that was brutalizing man.
Her faith in the intrinsic rectitude of the beloved
conventions was more deeply rooted. Moreover
woman fears the strictures of woman, more than
man fears the judgments of man.

VIII— GURNEY IN CORNWALL

GURNET'S alternative to flying from the plague was
to run away from himself. He shirked the issue in his
conversations with Thrale, shuffled, sophisticated,
and in a futile endeavour to convince his companion,
convinced himself that his reasoning was sound and
his motive unprejudiced.

It was not until the following Thursday, however,
that he took train to Cornwall. He had succeeded
in realizing between two and three hundred pounds
in gold, and this he took with him. He intended to
lay in stores of flour, sugar and other primary
necessities; to buy and keep two or three cows, to
rear chickens, to grow as much garden produce as
possible, especially potatoes; and generally to provide
against the coming scarcity of food and the cessation
of transport.

The bungalow on the shores of Constantine Bay,
to which he departed, was a place well suited to the
carrying out of these prudent arrangements. It
belonged to a friend of his, who was rich enough to
indulge his whims, and who had spent a considerable
sum of money in building the place and enclosing
ground, but who rarely occupied the bungalow
himself, and was too careless to bother about letting

89

90 GOSLINGS

it. Gurney had the keys in his possession. When he
had asked his friend for permission to spend his
summer holiday there, he had been told to use the
place as if it were his own. " Jolly good thing for
me, you know," his friend had said. " Keep it dry
and all that."

Gurney was not an idle man. Arrived at his bunga-
low, he lost no time in carrying out the arrangements
he had schemed, and for nearly three weeks he was
so absorbed in this work, in learning new occupations
and perfecting his plan, that he did, indeed, achieve
his purpose of running away from himself.

He became imbued with a new feeling of security;
he received neither letters nor papers from the
outside, and the old labourer who assisted him in
setting potatoes, who taught him to milk a cow
and instructed him generally in the primitive arts
of self-supporting toil, seemed to regard all rumours
of the new plague which filtered through to the
village of St Merryn as some foreign nonsense which
had little bearing on life in the county of Cornwall,
as represented by the twenty-five or thirty square
miles which were to him all the essential world.

Gurney began to believe that the plague would
never cross the Tamar, and one day in early May,
when his provisions against a seige were practically
completed, he was stirred to attempt a journey
across the peninsula in order to visit an acquaintance
in East Looe. Gurney had become conscious of a
longing for some companionship. Old Hawken was
very good at cows and potatoes, but he was rather
deaf and his range of ideas was severely restricted.

GURNEY IN CORNWALL 91

FROM Padstow to Looe is not an ideal journey by
rail at the best of times, involving as it does, a change
of train at Wadebridge, Bodmin Road and Liskeard;
but Gurney was in no hurry, and the conversations
he overheard in his compartment were not destruc-
tive of his new-found complacency. There was,
indeed, some mention of the plague, but only in
relation to the scarcity of food supply and its effect
on trade. One passenger, very obviously a farmer,
was congratulating himself that he was getting higher
prices for stock than he had ever known, and that as
luck would have it he had sown an unusual number
of acres with wheat that year. " I'll be gettun sixty
or seventy a quarter, sure 'nough," he boasted.

Dickenson — Gurney's friend in Looe — regarded
the matter more seriously, but he, too, seemed
untouched by any fear of personal infection. He was
an ardent Liberal, and his chief cause for concern
seemed to be that the plague should have come at
a time when so much progress was being made with
legislation. He was, also, very distressed at the
reports of poverty and starvation which abounded,
and at the terrible blow to trade generally. But he
seemed hopeful that the trouble would pass and be
followed by a new era of enlightened government,
founded on sound Liberal principles.

Gurney stayed the night and the greater part
of the next day at Looe.

92 GOSLINGS

3

ON his return journey he had to wait at Liskeard
to pick up the main line train for London, which
would take him to Bodmin Road.

It was a glorious May evening. The day had been
hot, but now there was a cool breeze from the sea,
and the long shadow from the high bank of the cut-
ting enwrapped the whole station in a pleasant twi-
light.

Gurney, deliberately pacing the length of the
platform, was conscious of physical vigour and a
great enjoyment of life. He had an imaginative
temperament, and in his moments of exaltation he
found the world both interesting and beautiful,
an entirely desirable setting for the essential Gurney.

So he strolled up and down the platform, regarded
any female figure with interest, and was in no way
concerned that the train was already an hour late.
He had expected it to be late. His own train from
Looe, for no particular reason, had been half an hour
late. If he missed his connexion at Wadebridge
he would only have some seven or eight miles to
walk.

Fifteen or twenty other people were waiting
on the down platform, and presently Gurney became
conscious that his fellow-passengers were no longer
detached into parties of two and three, but were
collected in groups, discussing, apparently, some
matter of peculiar interest.

Gurney had been lost in his dreams and had hardly
noticed the passage of time. He looked at his watch

GURNEY IN CORNWALL 93

and found that the train was now two hours overdue.
The sun had set, but there was still light in the sky.
A man detached himself from one of the groups and
Gurney approached him.

" Two hours late," he remarked by way of intro-
ducing himself, and looked at his watch again.

The man nodded emphatically. " Funny thing
is," he said, " that they've had no information at the
office. The stationmaster generally gets advice
when the train leaves Plymouth."

" Good lord," said Gurney. " Do you mean
to say that the train hasn't got to Plymouth
yet? "

" Looks like it," said the stranger. " They say it's
the plague. It's dreadfully bad in London, they
tell me."

" D'you mean it's possible the train won't come
in at all? " asked Gurney.

"Oh! I should hardly think that," replied the
other. " Oh, no, I should hardly think that, but
goodness knows when it will come. Very awkward
for me. I want to get to St Ives. It's a long way from
here. Have you far to go? "

" Well, Padstow," said Gurney.

" Padstow! " echoed the stranger. " That's a good
step."

" Further than I want to walk."

" I should say. Thirty miles or so, anyway? "

" About that," agreed Gurney. " I wonder where
one could get any information.

" It's very awkward," was all the help the stranger
had to offer.

94 GOSLINGS

Gurney crossed the line and invaded the station-
master's office. " Sorry to trouble you," he said,
" but do you think this train's been taken off, for any
reason? "

" Oh, it 'asn't been taken off," said the station-
master with a wounded air. " It may be a bit late."

Gurney smiled. " It's something over two hours
behind now, isn't it? " he said.

" Well, I can't 'elp it, can I? " asked the station-
master. " You'll 'ave to 'ave patience."

" You've had no advice yet from Plymouth? ):
persisted Gurney, facing the other's ill-temper.

" No, I 'aven't; something's gone wrong with the
wire. We can't get no answer," returned the station-
master. " Now, if you please, I 'ave my work to do."

Gurney returned to the down platform and joined
a group of men, among whom he recognized the
man he had spoken to a few minutes before.

The afterglow was dying out of the sky, in the
south-west a faint young moon was setting behind
the high bank of the cutting. A porter had lighted
the station lamps, but they were not turned full
on.

" The stationmaster tells me that something has
gone wrong with the telegraphic communication,"
said Gurney, addressing the little knot of passengers
collectively. " He can't get any answer it seems."

" Been an accident likely," suggested some one.

" Or the engine-driver's got the plague," said
another.

" They'd have put another man on."

" If they could find one."

GURNEY IN CORNWALL 95

" If we ain't careful we shall be gettin' the plague
down 'ere."

After all why not? The horrible suggestion sprang
up in Gurney's mind with new force. That remote
city seemed suddenly near. He saw in imagination
the train leaving Paddington, and only a journey of
six or seven hours divided that departure from its
arrival at Liskeard. It might come in at any moment,
bearing the awful infection. Why should he wait?
There was an inn near the station. He might find a
conveyance there.

" Constantine Bay? " questioned the landlord.

" It's near St Merryn," said Gurney, but still the
landlord shook his head.

" Not far from Padstow," explained Gurney.

" Pard-stow! " exclaimed the landlord on a rising
note. " Drive over to Pard-stow at this time o'
night? " He appeared to think that Gurney was
joking.

" Well, Bodmin, then," suggested Gurney.

" Aw, why not take the train? " asked the land-
lord.

Gurney shrugged his shoulders. " The train
doesn't seem to be coming," he said.

" Bad job, that," answered the landlord. " Been
an accident, sure 'nough; this new plague or some-
thing." He was evidently prepared to accept the
matter philosophically.

" You can't drive me then? " asked Gurney.

The landlord shook his head with a grin. He wa8
inclined to look upon this foreigner as rather more
foolish than the majority of his kind.

96 GOSLINGS

Gurney came out of the little inn, and looked
down into the station. The number of waiting
passengers seemed to be decreasing, but the light
was so dim that he could not see into the shadows.

" I must keep hold of myself," he was saying. " I
mustn't run."

A man was coming up the steep incline towards
him, and Gurney moved slowly to meet him. He
found that it was the stranger he had spoken to on
the platform.

" Any news ? " asked Gurney.

" Yes, they've got a message through from Saltash,
replied the stranger. " It's the plague right enough.
They say they don't know when there'll be another
train. ..."

4

DAYS grew into weeks, and still there were no trains.
Trade was at a standstill, and the prices of home
produce mounted steadily. Fish there was, but not
in great abundance, and the towns inland, such as
Truro and Bodmin, organized a motor service with
coast fishing villages, a service which only lasted for
a week, by reason of the failure of the petrol supply.
After that there was a less effective horse service.

Within three weeks after that last train arrived
from outside, a new system of exchange was coming
into vogue. In this little congeries of communities
in Cornwall, men were beginning to learn the use-
lessness of gold, silver and bronze coins as tokens.
Credit had collapsed, and a system of barter was
being introduced, mainly between farmer and fisher-

GURNEY IN CORNWALL 97

man. In time it was possible that Cornwall might have
become a self-supporting community, for its pro-
portionately few inhabitants were rapidly being
depleted by want and starvation; but, although it
was the last place in the British Isles to become
infected, the plague came there, too, in the end.

A steamer sent out from Cardiff on a plundering
expedition carried the plague to the Scillies, and
a fishing vessel from St Ives carried it on to
Newlyn. . . .

IX— THE DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE
GOSLING

THE progress of the plague through London and
the world in general was marked, in the earlier stages,
by much the same developments as are reported of
the plague of 1665. The closed houses, the burial
pits, the deserted streets, the outbreaks of every kind
of excess, the various symptoms of fear, cowardice,
fortitude and courage, evidenced little change in
the average of humanity between the seventeenth
and the twentieth centuries. The most notable
difference during these earlier stages was in the
enormously increased rapidity with which the
population of London was reduced to starvation
point. Even before the plague had reached England,
want had become general, so general, indeed, as to
have demonstrated very clearly the truth of the
great economist's contention that England could
not exist for three months with closed doors.

The coming of the plague threw London on to its
own very limited resources. That vast city, which
produced nothing but the tokens of wealth, and
added nothing to the essentials that support life,
was instantly reduced to the state of Paris in the
winter of 1870-71; with the difference, however,
that London's population could be decreased rapidly

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 99

by emigration, and was, also, even more rapidly
decreased by pestilence. Yet there was a large section
of the population which clung with blind obstinacy
to the only life it knew how to live.

There was, for instance, George Gosling, more
fortunate in many respects than the average citizen,
who clung desperately to his house in Wisteria Grove
until forced out of it by the lack of water.

On the ninth day after the first coming of the
plague to London — it appeared simultaneously in
a dozen places and spread with fearful rapidity —
Gosling broke one of the great laws he had hitherto
observed with such admirable prudence. The offices
and warehouse in Barbican had been shut up (tem-
porarily, it was supposed), and the partners had
disappeared from London. But Gosling had a
duplicate set of keys, and, inspired by the urgency
of his family's need, he determined to dare a journey
into the City in order to borrow (he laid great stress
on the word) a few necessaries of life from the well-
stored warehouse of his firm.

In this scheme, planned with some shrewdness,
he co-operated with a friend, a fellow-sidesman at
the Church of St John the Evangelist. This friend
was a coal merchant, and thus fortunately circum-
stanced in the possession of wagons and horses.

These two arranged the details of their borrowing
expedition between them. Economically, it was a
deal on the lines of the revived methods of exchange
and barter. Gosling was willing to exchange certain
advantages of knowledge and possession for the hire
of wagons and horses. It was decided, for obvious

H2

ioo GOSLINGS

reasons, to admit no other conspirator into the plot,
and Boost, the coal merchant, drove one cart and
Gosling drove the other. Perhaps it should rather
be said that he led the other, for, after a preliminary
trial, he decided that he was safer at the horses'
heads than behind their tails.

The raid was conducted with perfect success.
Boost had a head for essentials. The invaluable loads
of tinned meats, fruits and vegetables were screened
by tarpaulins from the possibly too envious eyes of
hungry passers-by — quite a number of vagrants were
to be seen in the streets on that day — and Boost and
Gosling, disguised in coal-begrimed garments, made
the return journey lugubriously calling, " Plague,
plague," the cry of the drivers of the funeral carts
which had even then become necessary. Their only
checks were the various applications they received
for the cartage of corpses; applications easily put
on one side by pointing to the piled-up carts — they
had spent six laborious hours in packing them.
" No room; no room," they cried, and on that day
the applicants who accosted Boost and Gosling were
not the only ones who had to wait for the disposal
of their dead.

Gosling arrived at Wisteria Grove, hot and out-
wardly jubilant, albeit with a horrible fear lurking in
his mind that he had been in dangerous proximity to
those tendered additions to his load. His booty was
stored in one of the downstairs rooms — with the
assistance of Mrs Gosling and the two girls they
managed the unpacking without interruption in
two hours and a half — and then, with boarded win-

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 101

dows and locked doors, the Goslings sat down to
await the passing of horror.

Boost died of the plague forty-eight hours after
the great adventure, but as he had a wife and four
daughters his plunder was not wasted.

FOR nearly a fortnight after the raid the Goslings
lay snug in their little house in Wisteria Grove, for
they, in company with the majority of English
people at this time, had not yet fully appreciated
the fact that women were almost immune from
infection. In all, not more than eight per cent of
the whole female population was attacked, and of
this proportion the mortality was almost exclusively
among women over fifty years of age. When the first
faint rumours of the plague had come to Europe,
this curious, almost unprecedented, immunity of
women had been given considerable prominence.
It had made good copy, theories on the subject had
appeared, and the point had aroused more interest
than that of the mortality among males — infectious
diseases were commonplace enough; this new phase
had a certain novelty and piquancy. But the threat
of European infection had overwhelmed the interest
in the odd predilection of the unknown bacterium,
and the more vital question had thrown this
peculiarity into the background. Thus the Goslings
and most other women feared attack no less than
their husbands, brothers and sons, and found justi-
fication for their fears in the undoubted fadl that
women had died of the plague.

io2 GOSLINGS

The Goslings had always jogged along amiably
enough; their home life would have passed muster
as a tolerably happy one. The head of the family
was out of the house from 8.15 a.m. to 7.15 p.m. five
days of the week, and it was only occasionally in the
evening of some long wet Sunday that there was
any open bickering.

Now, confinement in that little house, aggravated
by fear and by the absence of any interest or diver-
sion coming from outside, showed the family to one
another in new aspects. Before two days had passed
the air was tense with the suppressed irritation of
these four people, held together by scarcely any tie
other than that of a conventional affection.

By the third day the air was so heavily charged
that some explosion was inevitable. It came early in
the morning.

Gosling had run out of tobacco, and he thought
in the circumstances that it would be wiser to send
Blanche or Millie than to go himself. So, with an air
of exaggerated carelessness, he said:

" Look here, Millie, my gel, I wish you'd just run
out and see if you can get me any terbaccer."

" Not me," replied Millie, with decision.

" And why not? " asked Gosling.

Millie shrugged her shoulders, and called her
sister, who was in the passage. " I say, B., father
wants us to go out shopping for him. Are you
on?"

Blanche, duster in hand, appeared at the doorway.

" Why doesn't he go himself? " she asked.

" Because," replied her father, getting very red,

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 103

and speaking with elaborate care, " men's subject to
the infection and women is not."

" That's all my eye," returned Millie. " Lots of
women have got it."

" It's well known," said Gosling, still keeping
himself in hand, " a matter of common knowledge,
that women is comparatively immune."

" Oh, that's a man's yarn, that is," said Blanche,
" just to save themselves. We all know what men
are — selfish brutes! "

" Are you going to fetch me that terbaccer or are
you not? " shouted Mr Gosling suddenly.

" No, we aren't," said Millie, defiantly. " It isn't
safe for girls to go about the streets, let alone the
risk of infection." She had heard her father shout
before, and she was not, as yet, at all intimidated.

" Well, then, I say you are! " shouted her father.
" Lazy, good-for-nothing creatures, the pair of
you! 'Oose paid for everything you've eat or drunk
or wore ever since you was born? An' now you won't
even go an errand." Then, seeing the ready retort
rising to his daughters' lips, he grew desperate, and,
advancing a step towards them, he said savagely:
" If you don't go, I'll find a way to make yer! "

This was a new aspect, and the two girls were a
little frightened. Natural instinct prompted them to
scream for their mother.

She had been listening at the top of the stairs, and
she answered the call for help with great prompti-
tude.

" You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Gosling,"
she said, on a high note. " The streets isn't safe for

io4 GOSLINGS

gels, as you know well enough; and why should
my gels risk their lives for the sake of your nasty,
dirty, wasteful 'abit of smoking, I should like to
know? "

Gosling's new-found courage was evaporating at
the attack of this third enemy. He had been incensed
against his daughters, but he had not yet overcome
the habit of giving in to his wife, for the sake of
peace. She had managed him very capably for a
quarter of a century, but on the occasions when she
had found it necessary to use what she called the
" rough side of her tongue " she had demonstrated
very clearly which of the two was master.

" I should have thought I might 'a been allowed
a little terbaccer," he said, resentfully. " 'Oo risked
his life to lay in provisions, I should like to know?
An' it's a matter o' common knowledge as women is
immune from this plague."

" And Mrs Carter, three doors off, carried out
dead of it the day before yesterday! " remarked
Mrs Gosling, triumphantly.

" Oh, 'ere and there, a case or two," replied her
husband. " But not one woman to a thousand men
gets it, as every one knows."

" And how do you know I mightn't be the one? "
asked Millie, bold now under her mother's pro-
tection.

For that morning, the matter remained in abey-
ance; but Gosling, muttering and grumbling, nursed
his injury and meditated on the fact that his
daughters had been afraid of him. Things were
altered now. There was no convention to tie his

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 105

hands. He would work himself into a protective
passion and defy the three of them. Also, there was
an unopened bottle of whisky in the sideboard.

Nevertheless, he would have put off the trial of
his strength if he had had to seek an opportunity.
He was, as yet, too civilized to take the initiative in
cold blood.

The opportunity, however, soon presented itself
in that house. The air had been little cleared by the
morning's outbreak, and before evening the real
explosion came. A mere trifle originated it — a
warning from Gosling that their store of provisions
would not last for ever, and a sharp retort from
Millie to the effect that her father did not stint
himself, followed by a reminder from Mrs Gosling
that the raid might be repeated.

" Oh! yes, you'd be willing enough for me to die
of the plague, I've no doubt!" broke out Gosling.
" / can walk six mile to get you pervisions, but you
can't go to the corner of the street for my ter-
baccer."

" Pervisions is necessary, terbaccer ain't," said
Mrs Gosling. She was not a clever woman. She
judged this to be the right opportunity to keep her
husband in his place, and relied implicitly on
the quelling power of her tongue. Her intuitions
were those of the woman who had lived all her lif e in
a London suburb; they did not warn her that she
was now dealing with a specimen of half-decivilized
humanity.

" Oh! ain't it? " shouted Gosling, getting to his
feet. His face was purple, and his pale blue eyes were

106 GOSLINGS

starting from his head. " I'll soon show you what's
necessary and what ain't, and 'oose master in this
'ouse. And / say terbaccer is necessary, an' what's
more, one o' you three's goin' to fetch it quick!
D'ye 'ear — one — o' — you — three! "

This inclusion of Mrs Gosling was, indeed, to
declare war.

Millie and Blanche screamed and backed, but
their mother rose to the occasion. She did not
reserve herself; she began on her top note; but
Gosling did not allow her to finish. He strode over
to her and shook her by the shoulders, shouting to
drown her strident recriminations. " 'Old your
tongue! 'old your tongue! " he bawled, and shook
her with increasing violence. He was feeling his
power, and when his wife crumpled up and fell to
the floor in shrieking hysterics, he still strode on to
victory. Taking the cowed and terrified Millie by
the arm, he dragged her along the passage, unlocked
and opened the front door and pushed her out into
the street. " And don't you come back without my
terbaccer! " he shouted.

" How much? " quavered the shrinking Millie.

" 'Alf-a-crown's worth," replied Gosling fiercely,
and tossed the coin down on the little tiled walk
that led up to the front door.

After Millie had gone he stood at the door for a
moment, thankful for the coolness of the air on his
heated face. " I got to keep this up," he murmured
to himself, with his first thought of wavering.
Behind him he heard the sound of uncontrolled
weeping and little cries of the " first time in twenty-

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 107

four years " and " what the neighbours'll think, I
don't know."

" Neighbours," muttered Gosling, contemptuous-
ly, " there aren't any neighbours — not to count."

A distant sound of slow wheels caught his ear.
He listened attentively, and there came to him the
remote monotonous chant of a dull voice crying:
"Plague! Plague!"

He stepped in quickly and closed the door.

MILLIE found the Kilburn High Road deserted.
No traffic of any kind was to be seen in the street,
and the rare foot-passengers, chiefly women, had
all a furtive air. Starvation had driven them out to
raid. No easy matter, as Millie soon found, for all
shutters were down, and in many cases shop-fronts
were additionally protected by great sheets of strong
hoarding.

Millie, recovering from her fright, was growing
resentful. Her little conventional mind was greatly
occupied by the fact that she was out in the High
Road wearing house-shoes without heels, in an old
print dress, and with no hat to hide the carelessness
of her hair-dressing. At the corner of Wisteria
Grove she stopped and tried to remedy this last
defect; she had red hair, abundant and difficult to
control.

The sight of the deserted High Road did not
inspire her with self-confidence; she still feared the
possibility of meeting some one who might recognize

io8 GOSLINGS

her. How could one account for one's presence in a
London thoroughfare at seven o'clock on a bright
May evening in such attire? Certainly not by telling
the truth.

The air was wonderfully clear. Coal was becoming
very scarce, and few fires had been lighted that day
to belch forth their burden of greasy filth into the
atmosphere. The sun was sinking, and Millie in-
stinctively clung to the shadow of the pavement on
the west side of the road. She, too, slunk along with
the evasive air that was common to the few other
pedestrians, the majority of them on this same
shadowed pavement. That warm, radiant light on
the houses opposite seemed to hold some horror
for them.

So preoccupied was Millie with her resentment
that she wandered for two or three hundred yards
up the road without any distinct idea of what she
was seeking. When realization of the futility of her
search came to her, she stopped in the shadow of a
doorway. " What is the good of going on? " she
argued. " All the shops are shut up." But the
thought of her father in his new aspect of muscular
tyrant intimidated her. She dared not return
without accomplishing her errand. " I'll have another
look, anyway," she said; and then: " Who'd have
thought he was such a brute? " She rubbed the
bruise on her arm; her mouth was twisted into an
ugly expression of spiteful resentment. Her thoughts
were busy with plans of revenge even as she
turned to prosecute her search for the tyrant's
tobacco.

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 109

Here and there shops had been forcibly, burglar-
iously entered, plate-glass windows smashed, and
interiors cleared of everything eatable; the debris
showed plainly enough that these rifled shops had
all belonged to grocers or provision merchants.
Into each of these ruins Millie stared curiously,
hoping foolishly that she might find what she sought.
She ventured into one and carried away a box of
soap — they were running short of soap at home. A
sense of moving among accessible riches stirred
within her, a desire for further pillage.

She came at last to a shop where the shutters were
still intact, but the door hung drunkenly on one
hinge. A little fearfully she peered in and discovered
that fortune had been kind to her. The shop had
belonged to a tobacconist, and the contents were
almost untouched — there had been more crying
needs to satisfy in the households of raiders than the
desire for tobacco.

It was very dark inside, and for some seconds
Millie stared into what seemed absolute blackness,
but as her eyes became accustomed to the gloom,
she saw the interior begin to take outline, and when
she moved a couple of steps into the place and
allowed more light to come in through the doorway,
various tins, boxes and packets in the shelves behind
the counter were faintly distinguishable.

Once inside, the spirit of plunder took hold of
her, and she began to take down boxes of cigars and
cigarettes and packets of tobacco, piling them up in
a heap on the counter. But she had no basket in
which to carry the accumulation she was making,

i io GOSLINGS

and she was feeling under the counter for some box
into which to put her haul, when the shadows
round her deepened again into almost absolute
darkness. Cautiously she peered up over the counter
and saw the silhouette of a woman standing in the
doorway.

For ten breathless seconds Millie hung motion-
less, her eyes fixed on the apparition. She was very
civilized still, and she was suddenly conscious of
committing a crime. She feared horribly lest the
figure in the doorway might discover Millicent
Gosling stealing tobacco. But the intruder, after
recognizing the nature of the shop's contents,
moved away with a sigh. Millie heard her dragging
footsteps shufHe past the window'.

That scare decided her movements. She hastily
looped up the front of her skirt, bundled into it as
much plunder as she could conveniently carry, and
made her way out into the street again.

She was nearly at the corner of Wisteria Grove
before she was molested, and then an elderly woman
came suddenly out of a doorway and laid a hand on
Millie's arm.

" Whacher got? " asked the woman savagely.

Millie, shrinking and terrified, displayed her
plunder.

" Cigars," muttered the woman. " Whacher want
with cigars? " She opened the boxes and stirred up
the contents of Millie's improvised bundle in an
eager search for something to eat. " Gawd's truth!
yer must be crazy, yer thievin' little slut! " she
grumbled, and pushed the girl fiercely from her.

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 1 1 1

Millie made good her escape, dropping a box of
cigars in her flight. Her one thought now was the
fear of meeting a policeman. In three minutes she
was beating fiercely on the door of the little house
in Wisteria Grove, and, disregarding her father's
exclamations of pleased surprise when he let her in,
she tumbled in a heap on to the mat in the passage.

Gosling's first declaration of male superiority had
been splendidly successful.

A FEW minutes after Millie's return, Mrs Gosling,
red-eyed and timidly vicious, interrupted her
husband's perfect enjoyment of the long-desired
cigar by the announcement: " The gas is off! "

Gosling got up, struck a match, and held it to the
sitting-room burner. The match burned steadily.
There was no pressure even of air in the pipes.

"Turned off at the meter!" snapped Gosling.
" 'Ere, lemme go an' see! " He spoke with the air
of the superior male, strong in his comprehension of
the mechanical artifices which so perplex the
feminine mind. Mrs Gosling sniffed, and stood aside
to let him pass. She had already examined the
meter.

" Well, we got lamps ! " snarled Gosling when he
returned. He had always preferred a lamp to read
by in the evening.

" No oil," returned Mrs Gosling, gloomily. She'd
teach him to shake her!

Gosling meditated. His parochial mind was full

ii2 GOSLINGS

of indignation. Vague thoughts of " getting some one
into trouble for this " — even of that last, desperate
act of coercion, writing to the papers about it —
flitted through his mind. Plainly something must
be done. " 'Aven't you got any candles? " he asked.

" One or two. They won't last long," replied his
studiously patient partner.

" Well, we'll 'ave to use them to-night and go to
bed early," was Gosling's final judgment. His wife
left the room with a shrug of forbearing contempt.

When she had gone, the head of the house went
upstairs and peered out into the street. The sun
had set, and an unprecedented mystery of darkness
was falling over London. The globes of the tall
electric standards, catching a last reflection from the
fading sky, glimmered faintly, but were not illumin-
ated from within by any fierce glare of violet light.
Darkness and silence enfolded the great dim organ-
ism that sprawled its vast being over the earth.
The spirit of mystery caught Gosling in its spell.
" All dark," he murmured, " and quiet ! Lord ! how
still it is ! " Even in his own house there was silence.
Downstairs, three injured, resentful women were
talking in whispers.

Gosling, still sucking his cigar, stood entranced,
peering into the darkness; he had ventured so far as
to throw up the sash. " It's the stillness of death! "
he muttered. Then he cocked his head on one side,
for he caught the sound of distant shouting. Some-
where in the Kilburn Road another raid was in
progress.

" No light," murmured Gosling, " and no fire! "

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 113

An immediate association suggested itself. " By
gosh! and no water! " he added. For some seconds
he contemplated with fearful awe the failure of the
great essential of life.

In the cistern room he was reassured by the sound
of a delicious trickle from the ball-cock. " Still
going," he said to himself; " but we'll 7ave to be
careful. Surely they'll keep the water goin', though;
whatever 'appens, they'd surely keep the water on? "

NOTHING but the failure of the water could have
driven them from Wisteria Grove. Half-a-dozen
times every day Gosling would climb up to the top
of the house to reassure himself. And at last came
the day when a dreadful silence reigned under the
slates, when no delicious tinkle of water gave
promise of maintained security from water famine.

" It'll come on again at night," said Gosling to
himself. " We'll 'ave to be careful, that's all."

He went downstairs and issued orders that no
more water was to be drawn that day.

" Well, we must wash up the breakfast things,"
was his wife's reply.

" You mustn't wash up nothing," said Gosling,
" not one blessed thing. It's better to go dirty than
die o' thirst. Hevery drop o' the water in that cistern
must be saved for drinkin'."

Mrs Gosling noisily put down the kettle she was
holding. " Oh! very well, my lord! " she remarked,
sarcastically. She looked at her two daughters with

I

ii4 GOSLINGS

a twist of her mouth. There were only two sides in
that house; the women were as yet united against
the common foe.

When Gosling, fatuously convinced of his author-
ity, had gone, his wife quietly filled the kettle and
proceeded with her washing up.

" Your father thinks 'e knows everything these
days," remarked the mother to her allies.

There was much whispering for some time.

Gosling spent most of the day in the roof, but not
until the afternoon did he realize that the cistern
was slowly being emptied. His first thought was that
one of the pipes leaked, his second that it was time
to make a demonstration of force. He found a
walking-stick in the hall. . . .

But even when that precious half-cistern of water
was only called upon to supply the needs of thirst,
and the Goslings, sinking further into the degrada-
tion of savagedom, slunk furtive and filthy about
the gloomy house, it became evident that a
move must be made sooner or later. Two alternatives
were presented: they might go north and east to
the Lea, or south to the Thames.

Gosling chose the South. He knew Putney; he had
been born there. He knew nothing of Clapton and
its neighbourhood.

So one bright, clear day at the end of May, the
Goslings set out on their great trek. The head of the
house, driven desperate by fear of thirst, raided his
late partner's coal sheds and found one living horse
and several dead ones. The living horse was partly
revived by water from an adjacent butt, and the

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 115

next day it was harnessed to a coal cart and com-
mandeered to convey the Goslings' provisions to
Putney. It died half-a-mile short of their destina-
tion, but they were able, by the exercise of their
united strength, to get the cart and its burden down
to the river.

They found an empty house without difficulty,
but they had an unpleasant half -hour in removing
what remained of one of the previous occupants.
Gosling hoped it was not a case of plague. As the
body was that of a woman, and terribly emaciated,
there were some grounds for his optimism.

Gosling was in a state of some bewilderment.
When water had been fetched in buckets from the
river, and the three women had explored, criticized
and sniffed over their new home somewhat in the
manner of strange cats, the head of the house settled
down to a cigar and a careful consideration of his
perplexities.

In the first place, he wondered why those horses
of Boost's had not been used for food; in the second,
he wondered why he had not seen a single man
during the whole of the long trek from Brondesbury
to Putney. By degrees an unbelievable explanation
presented itself: no men were left. He remembered
that the few needy-looking women he had seen
had looked at him curiously; in retrospect he fancied
their regard had had some quality of amazement.
Gosling scratched the bristles of his ten-days'-old
beard and smoked thoughtfully. He almost re-
gretted that he had stared so fiercely and threaten-
ingly at every chance woman they had seen; he

i 2

n6 GOSLINGS

might have got some news. But the whole journey
had been conduced in a spirit of fear; they had been
defending their food, their lives; they had been
primitive creatures ready to fight desperately at the
smallest provocation.

" No man left," said Gosling to himself, and was
not convinced. If that indeed were the solution of
his perplexity, he was faced with an awful corollary;
his own time would come. He thought of Barbican,
E.G., of Flack, of Messrs Barker and Prince, of the
office staff, and the office itself. He had not been
able to rid his mind of the idea that in a few weeks
he would be back in the City again. He had several
times rehearsed his surprise when he should be told
of the depredations in the warehouse; he had
wondered only yesterday if he dared go to the office
in his beard.

But to-night the change of circumstance, the
breaking up of old associations, was opening his eyes
to new horizons. There might never be an office
again for him to go to. If he survived — and he was
distinctly hopeful on that score — he might be
almost the only man left in London; there might
not be more than a few thousand in the whole of
England, in Europe. . . .

For a time he dwelt on this fantastic vision. Who
would do the work? What work would there be to
do?

" Got to get food," murmured Gosling, and
wondered vaguely how food was " got " when there
were no shops, no warehouses, no foreign agents.
His mind turned chiefly to meat, since that had

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 117

been his trade. " 'Ave to rear sheep and cattle, I
suppose," said Gosling. As an afterthought he
added : " An' grow wheat."

He sighed heavily. He realized that he had no
knowledge on the subject of rearing cattle and
growing wheat; he also realized that he was craving
for ordinary food again — milk, eggs, and fresh
vegetables. He had a nasty-looking place on his leg
which he rightly attributed to unwholesome diet.

AFTER forty-eight hours' residence in the new house,
Gosling began to pluck up his courage and to dare
the perils of the streets. He was beginning to have
faith in his luck, to believe that the plague had passed
away and left him untouched.

And as day succeeded day he ventured further
afield; he went in search of milk, eggs and vegetables,
but he only found young nettles, which he brought
home and helped to eat when they had been boiled
over a wood fire. They were all glad to eat nettles,
and were the better for them. Occasionally he met
women on these excursions, and stayed to talk to
them. Always they had the same tale to tell — their
men were dead, and themselves dying of starvation.

One day at the beginning of June he went as far
as Petersham, and there at the door of a farmhouse
he saw a fine, tall young woman. She was such a
contrast to the women he usually met on his
expeditions that he paused and regarded her with
curiosity.

ii8 GOSLINGS

" What do you want? " asked the young woman,
suspiciously.

" I suppose you 'aven't any milk or butter or
eggs to sell? " asked Gosling.

" Sell? " echoed the girl, contemptuously. " What
'ave you got to give us as is worth food? "

" Well, money," replied Gosling.

" Money! " came the echo again. " What's the
good of money when there's nothing to buy with
it? I wouldn't sell you eggs at a pound apiece."

Gosling scratched his beard — it looked quite like
a beard by this time. " Rum go, ain't it? " he asked,
and smiled.

His new acquaintance looked him up and down,
and then smiled in return, " You're right," she
said. " You're the first man I've seen since father
died, a month back."

" 'Go's livin' with you? " asked Gosling, pointing
to the house.

" Mother and sister, that's all."

" 'Ard work for you to get a livin', I suppose?"

" So, so. We're used to farm-work. The trouble's
to keep the other women off."

" Ah! " replied Gosling reflectively, and the two
looked at one another again.

" You 'ungry? " asked the girl.

" Not to speak of," replied Gosling. " But I'm
fair pinin' for a change o' diet. Been livin' on tinned
things for five weeks or more."

" Come in and have an egg," said the girl.

" Thank you," said Gosling, " I will, with
pleasure."

DEVOLUTION OF GEORGE GOSLING 1 19

They grew friendly over that meal — two eggs and
a glass of milk. He ate the eggs with butter, but there
was no bread. It seemed that the young woman's
mother and sister were at work on the farm, but that
one of them had always to stay at home and keep guard.

They discussed the great change that had come
over England, and wondered what would be the
end of it; and after a little time, Gosling began to
look at the girl with a new expression in his pale
blue eyes.

" Ah! Hevrything's changed," he said. " Nothin'
won't be the same any more, as far as we can see.
There's no neighbours now, f'rinstance, and no talk
of what's going on — or anythin'."

The girl looked at him thoughtfully. " What we
miss is some man to look after the place," she said.
" We're robbed terrible."

Gosling had not meant to go as far as that. He
was not unprepared for a pleasant flirtation, now
that there were no neighbours to report him at
home, but the idea that he could ever separate
himself permanently from his family had not
occurred to him.

" Yes," he said, " you want a man about these
days."

" Ever done any farm work? " asked the girl.

Gosling shook his head.

" Well, you'd soon learn," she went on.

" I must think it over," said Gosling suddenly.
" Shall you be 'ere to-morrow? "

" One of us will," said the girl.

"Ah! but shallow?"

GOSLINGS
« Why me? "

" Well, I've took a fancy to you.M
" Very kind of you, I'm sure," said the girl, and
laughed.

Gosling kissed her before he left.

HE returned the next afternoon and helped to cut
and stack sainfoin, and afterwards he watched the
young woman milk the cows. It was so late by the
time everything was finished that he was persuaded
to stay the night.

In the new Putney house three women wondered
what had happened to " father." They grew in-
creasingly anxious for some days, and even tried in
a feeble way to search for him. By the end of the
week they accepted the theory that he too had died
of the plague.

They never saw him again.

X— EXODUS

IN West Hampstead a Jewess, who had once been
fat, looked out of the windows of her gaudy house.
She was partly dressed in a garish silk neglige. Her
face was exceedingly dirty, but the limp, pallid
flesh was revealed in those places where she had
wiped away her abundant tears. Her body was
bruised and stiff, for in a recent raid on a house
suspected of containing provisions she had been
hardly used by her sister women. She had made the
mistake of going out too well dressed; she had
imagined that expensive clothes would command
respect. . . .

As she looked out she wept again, bewailing her
misery. From her earliest youth she had been
pampered and spoilt. She had learnt that marriage
was her sole object in life, and she had sold herself
at a very respectable price. She had received the
applause and favour of her family for marrying the
man she had chosen as most likely to provide her
with the luxury which she regarded as her birth-
right.

Two days ago she had cooked and eaten the
absurdly expensive but diminutive dog upon which
she had lavished the only love of which she had been
capable. She had wept continuously as she ate her

121

122 GOSLINGS

idol, but for the first time she had regretted his

littleness.

Hunger and thirst were driving her out of the
house of which she had been so vain; the primitive
pains were awakening in her primitive instincts that
had never stirred before. From her window she
could see naught but endless streets of brick, stone
and asphalt, but beyond that dry, hot, wilderness
she knew there were fields — she had seen them out
of the corner of her eye when she had motored to
Brighton. Fields had never been associated in her
mind with food until the strange new stirring of
that unsuspected instinct. Food for her meant
shops. One went to shops and bought food and
bought the best at the lowest price possible. With all
her pride of position, she had never hesitated to
haggle with shopkeepers. And when the first pinch
had come, when her husband had selfishly died of
the plague, and her household had deserted her, it
was to the shops she had gone, autocratically
demanding her rights. She had learned by experience
now that she had no longer any rights.

She dressed herself in her least-conspicuous
clothes, dabbed her face with powder to cover
some of the dirt — there was no water, and in any
case she did not feel inclined to wash — care-
fully stowed away all her money and the best
of her jewels in a small leather bag, and set out
to find the country where food grew out of the
ground.

Instinct set her face to the north. She took the
road towards Hendon.

EXODUS 123

IN every quarter of London, in every great town
and city throughout Europe, women were setting
their faces towards the country.

By the autumn London was empty. The fallen
leaves in park squares and suburban streets were
swept into corners by the wind, and when the rain
came the leaves clung together and rotted, and
so continued the long routine of decay and
birth.

When spring came again, Nature returned with
delicate, strong hands to claim her own. For hun-
dreds of years she had been defied in the heart of
this great, hard, stone place. Her little tentative
efforts had been rudely repulsed, no tender thread
of grass had been allowed to flourish for an hour
under the feet of the crushing multitude. Yet she
had fought with a steady persistence that never
relaxed a moment's effort. Whenever men had
given her a moment's opportunity, even in the
very heart of that city of burning struggle, she had
covered the loathed sterility with grass and flowers,
dandelions, charlock, grounsel and other life that
men call weeds.

Now, when her full opportunity came, she set to
work in her slow, patient way to wreck and cover the
defilement of earth. Her winds swept dust into every
corner, and her rain turned it into a shallow bed of
soil, ready to receive and nurture the tiny seeds that

i44 GOSLINGS

sailed on little feathered wings, or were carried by
bird and ins eft to some quiet refuge in which they
might renew life, and, dying, add fertility to the
mother who had brought them forth.

Nature came, also, with her hurricanes, her
lightnings and her frosts, to rend and destroy. She
stripped slates from roofs, thrust out gables and
overturned solid walls. She came with fungi to
undermine and with the seeds of trees to split
asunder.

She asked for but a few hundred years of patient,
continuous work in order to make of London once
more a garden; where the nightingale might sing in
Oxford Street and the children of a new race pluck
sweet wild flowers over the site of the Bank of
England. . . .

THE spirit of London had gone out of her, and her
body was crumbling and rotting. There was no life
in all that vast sprawl of bricks and mortar; the very
dogs and cats, deserted by humanity, left her to
seek their only food, to seek those other living
things which were their natural quarry.

In her prime, London had been the chief city of
the world. Men and women spoke of her as an
entity, wrote of her as of a personality, loved her as
a friend. This aggregate of streets and parks, this
strange confusion of wealth and squalor, had stood
to men and women for something definitely lovable.

EXODUS 125

It was not her population they loved, not the poly-
glot crowd that swarmed in her streets, but she
herself and all the beauty and intoxication of life she
had gathered into her embrace.

Now she was dead. Whatever fine qualities she
had possessed, whatever vices, had gone from her.
She sprawled in all her naked ugliness, a huge corpse
rotting among the hills, awaiting the slow burial
which Nature was tediously preparing.

All those wonderful buildings, the great em-
poriums in the West End, the magnificent banks
and insurance offices, museums and picture gal-
leries, regarded as the storehouses of incalculable
wealth, vast hotels, palatial private residences, the
thundering railway termini, Government offices,
Houses of Parliament, theatres, churches and cathe-
drals, all had become meaningless symbols. All had
represented some activity, some ambition of man,
and man had fled to the country for food, leaving
behind the worthless tokens of wealth that had
intrigued him for so many centuries.

Gold and silver grew tarnished in huge safes that
none wished to rifle, banknotes became mildewed,
damp and fungus crept into the museums and picture
galleries, and in the whole of Great Britain there
was none to grieve. Every living man and woman
was back at the work of their ancestors, praying
once more to Ceres or Demeter, working with bent
back to produce the first essentials of life.

Each individual must produce until such time as
there was once more a superfluity, until barns were
filled and wealth re-created, until the strong had

T26 GOSLINGS

seized from the weak and demanded labour in
return for the use of the stolen instrument, until
civilization had sprung anew from the soil.

Meanwhile London was not a city of the dead,
but a dead city.

BOOK II

THE MARCH OF THE GOSLINGS

XI— THE SILENT CITY

JULY came in with temperate heat and occasional
showers, ideal weather for the crops ; for all the pre-
cious growths which must ripen before the famine
could be stayed. The sudden stoppage of all imports,
and the flight of the great urban population into the
country, had demonstrated beyond all question the
poverty of England's resources of food supply, and
the demonstration was to prove of value although
there was no economist left to theorize. England was
once again an independent unit, and no longer a
member of a great world-body. Indeed England was
being subdivided. The unit of organization was
shrinking with amazing rapidity. The necessity for
concentration grew with every week that passed, the
fluidity of the superfluous labour was being resolved
by death from starvation. The women who wandered
from one farm to the next died by the way.

In the Putney house, Mrs Gosling and her daugh-
ters were faced by the failure of their food supply.
The older woman had little initiative. She was a true
Londoner. Her training and all the circumstances of
her life had narrowed her imaginative grasp till she
was only able to comprehend one issue. And as yet
her daughters, and more particularly Millie, were so

129 K

130 GOSLINGS

influenced by their mother's thought that they, also,
had shown little evidence of adaptability to the
changed conditions.

" We shall 'ave to be careful," was Mrs Gosling's
first expression of the necessity for looking to the
future. She had arranged the bulk of her stores neatly
in one room on the second floor, and although a
goodly array of tins still faced her she experienced
a miserly shrinking from any diminishment of their
numbers. Moreover, she had long been without such
necessities as flour. Barker and Prince had not dealt
in flour.

Returning from her daily inspection one morning
in the second week of July, Mrs Gosling decided that
something must be done at once. Fear of the plague
was almost dead, but fear of invasion by starving
women had kept them all close prisoners. That house
was a fortress.

" Look 'ere, gels," said Mrs Gosling when she came
downstairs. " Somethin' '11 'ave to be done."

Blanche looked thoughtful. Her own mind had
already begun to work on that great problem of their
future. Millie, lazy and indifferent, shrugged her
shoulders and replied: " All very well, mother, but
what can we do? "

" Well, I been thinking as it's very likely as things
ain't so bad in some places as they are just about
'ere," said Mrs Gosling. " We got plenty o' money
left, and it seems to me as two of us 'ad better go out
and 'ave a look about, London way. One of us could
look after the 'ouse easy enough, now. We 'aven't
'ardly seen a soul about the past fortnight."

THE SILENT CITY 131

The suggestion brought a gleam of hope to
Blanche. She visualized the London she had known.
It might be that in the heart of the town, business
had begun again, that shops were open and people at
work. It might be that she could find work there. She
was longing for the sight and movement of life, after
these two awful months of isolation.

" I'm on," she said briskly. " Me and Millie had
better go, mother, we can walk farther. You can lock
up after us and you needn't open the door to anyone.
Are you on, Mill? "

" We must make ourselves look a bit more decent
first," said Millie, glancing at the mirror over the
mantelpiece.

" Well, of course," returned Blanche, " we
brought one box of clothes with us."

They spent some minutes in discussing the re-
sources of their wardrobe.

" Come to the worst we could fetch some more
things from Wisteria. I don't suppose anyone has
touched 'em," suggested Blanche.

At the mention of the house in Wisteria Grove,
Mrs Gosling sighed noticeably. She was by no means
satisfied with the place at Putney, and she could not
rid herself of the idea that there must be accessible
gas and water in Kilburn, as there had always been.

" Well, you might go up there one day and 'ave a
look at the place," she put in. " It's quite likely
they've got things goin' again up there."

In less than an hour Blanche and Millie had made
themselves presentable. Life had begun to stir again
in humanity. The atmosphere of horror which the

K2

132 GOSLINGS

plague had brought was being lifted. It was as if the
dead germs had filled the air with an invisible, im-
palpable dust, that had exercised a strange power of
depression. The spirit of death had hung over the
whole world and paralyzed all activity. Now the dust
was dispersing. The spirit was withdrawing to the
unknown deeps from which it had come.

" It is nice to feel decent again," said
Blanche. She lifted her head arid threw back her
shoulders.

Millie was preening herself before the glass.
" Well, I'm sure you 'ave made yourselves look
smart," said their mother with a touch of pride.
" They were good girls," she reflected, " if there had
been more than a bit of temper shown lately. But,
then, who could have helped themselves? It had been
a terrible time."

The July sun was shining brilliantly as the two
young women, presentable enough to attend morn-
ing service at the Church of St John the Evangelist,
Kilburn, set out to exhibit their charms and to buy
food in the dead city.

THEY crossed Putney Bridge and made their way
towards Hammersmith.

The air was miraculously clear. The detail of the
streets was so sharp and bright that it was as if they
saw with wonderfully renewed and sensitive eyes. The
phenomenon produced a sense of exhilaration. They

THE SILENT CITY 133

were conscious of quickened emotion, of a sensation
of physical well-being.

" Isn't it clean? " said Blanche.

"H'm! Funny!" returned Millie. "Like those
photographs of foreign places."

Under their feet was an accumulation of sharp,
dry dust, detritus of stone, asphalt and steel. In
corners where the fugitive rubbish had found refuge
from the driving wind, the dust had accumulated in
flat mounds, broken by scraps of paper or the torn
flag of some rain-soaked poster that gave an untidy
air of human refuse. Across the open way of certain
roads the dust lay in a waved pattern of nearly paral-
lel lines, like the ridged sand of the foreshore.

For some time they kept to the pavements from
force of habit.

" I say, Mill, don't you feel adventurous? " asked
Blanche.

Millie looked dissatisfied. " It's so lonely, B.," was
her expression of feeling.

" Never had London all to myself before," said
Blanche.

Near Hammersmith Broadway they saw a tram
standing on the rails. Its thin tentacle still clung to
the overhead wire that had once given it life, as if it
waited there patiently hoping for a renewal of the
exhilarating current.

Almost unconsciously Blanche and Millie quick-
ened their pace. Perhaps this was the outermost
dying ripple of life, the furthest outpost of the new
activity that was springing up in central London.

But the tram was guarded by something that in

134 GOSLINGS

the hot, still air seemed to surround it with an almost
visible mist.

"Eugh!" ejaculated Millie and shrank back.
" Don't go, Blanche. It's awful! "

Blanche's hand also had leapt to her face, but she
took a few steps forward and peered into the sunlit
case of steel and glass. She saw a heap of clothes about
the framework of a grotesquely jointed scarecrow,
and the gleam of something round, smooth and
white.

She screamed faintly, and a filthy dog crept, with
a thin yelp, from under the seat and came to the door
of the tram. For a moment it stood there with an air
that was half placatory, wrinkling its nose and feebly
raising a stump of propitiatory tail, then, with
another protesting yelp, it crept back, furtive and
ashamed, to its unlawful meat.

The two girls, handkerchief to nose, hurried by
breathless, with bent heads. A little past Hammer-
smith Broadway they had their first sight of human
life. Two gaunt faces looked out at them from an
upper window. Blanche waved her hand, but the
women in the house, half -wondering, half -fearful, at
the strange sight of these two fancifully dressed
girls, shook their heads and drew back. Doubtless
there was some secret hoard of food in that house and
the inmates feared the demands of charity.

" Well, we aren't quite the last, anyway," com-
mented Blanche.

" What were they afraid of? " asked Millie.

" Thought we wanted to cadge, I expect," sug-
gested Blanche.

THE SILENT CITY 135

" Mean things," was her sister's comment.

" Well ! we weren't so over-anxious to have visi-
tors," Blanche reminded her.

" We didn't want their beastly food," complained
the affronted Millie.

The shops in Hammersmith did not offer much
inducement to exploration. Some were still closely
shuttered, others presented goods that offered no
temptation, such as hardware; but the majority had
already been pillaged and devastated. Most of
that work had been done in the early days of
the plague when panic had reigned, and many
men were left to lead the raids on the preserves
of food.

Only one great line of shuttered fronts induced
the two girls to pause.

" No need to go to Wisteria for clothes," sug-
gested Blanche.

" How could we get in? " asked Millie.

" Oh ! get in some way easy enough."

" It's stealing," said Millie, and thought of her
raid on the Kilburn tobacconist's.

" You can't steal from dead people," explained
Blanche; " besides, who'll have the things if we
don't? "

" I suppose it'd be all right," hesitated Millie,
obviously tempted.

" Well, of course," returned Blanche and paused.
" I say, Mill," she burst out suddenly. " There's all
the West-end to choose from. Come on! "

For a time they walked more quickly.

In Kensington High Street they had an adventure.

136 GOSLINGS

They saw a woman decked in gorgeous silks, strung
and studded with jewels from head to foot. She
walked with a slow and flaunting step, gesticulating,
and talking. Every now and again she would pause
and draw herself up with an affectation of immense
dignity, ringer the ropes of jewels at her breast, and
make a slow gesture with her hands.

" She's mad," whispered Blanche, and the two
girls, terrified and trembling, hastily took refuge in
a great square cave full of litter and refuse that had
once been a grocer's shop.

The woman passed their hiding-place in her
stately progress westward without giving any sign
that she was conscious of their presence. When she
was nearly opposite to them she made one of her
stately pauses. "Queen of all the Earth," they heard
her say, " Queen and Empress. Queen of the Earth."
Her hand went up to her head and touched a strange
collection of jewels pinned in her hair, of tiaras and
brooches that flashed brighter than the high lights
of the brilliant sun. One carelessly fastened brooch
fell and she pushed it aside with her foot. " You
understand," she said in her high, wavering voice,
" you understand, Queen and Empress, Queen of the
Earth."

They heard the refrain of her gratified ambition
repeated as she moved slowly away.

A long submerged memory rose to the threshold
of Millie's mind. " Thieving slut," she murmured.

THE SILENT CITY 137

3

As they came nearer to representative London the
signs of deserted traffic were more numerous. By the
Albert Memorial they saw an overturned motor-bus
which had smashed into the park railings, and a little
further on were two more buses, one standing
decently at the curb, the other sprawling across the
middle of the road. The wheels of both were axle
deep in the dust which had blown against them, and
out of the dust a few weak threads of grass were
sprouting. There were other vehicles, too, cabs,
lorries and carts: not a great number altogether,
but even the fifty or so which the girls saw between
Kensington and Knightsbridge offered sufficient
testimony to the awful rapidity with which the
plague had spread. For it seems probable that in
the majority of cases the drivers of these deserted
vehicles must have been attacked by the first
agonizing pains at the base of the skull while they
were actually employed in driving their machines.
There were few skeletons to be seen. The lull which
intervened between the first unmistakable symp-
toms of the plague and the oncoming of the paraly-
sis had given men time to obey their instinct to die
in seclusion, the old instinct so little altered by civi-
lization. Those vestiges of humanity which remained
had, for the most part, been cleansed by the pro-
cesses of Nature, but twice the girls disturbed a hor-
rible cloud of blue flies which rose with an angry
buzzing so loud that the girls screamed and ran,
leaving the scavengers to swoop eagerly back upon

138 GOSLINGS

their carrion. Doubtless the thing in the Hammer-
smith tram had been the body of a woman, recently
dead from starvation. Even from the houses there
was now little exhalation.

In Knightsbridge, a little past the top of Sloane
Street, Blanche and Millie came to a shop which
diverted them from their exploration for a time.
Most of the huge rolling shutters had been pulled
down and secured, but one had stopped half way,
and, beyond, the great plate-glass windows were
uncovered. One of ten million tragedies had de-
scended swiftly to interrupt the closing of that
immense place, and some combination of circum-
stances had followed to prevent the completion of
the work. The imaginative might stop to speculate
on the mystery of that half-closed shutter; the two
Goslings stopped to admire the wonders behind the
glass.

For a time the desolation and silence of London
were forgotten. In imagination Blanche and Millie
were once again units in the vast crowd of anta-
gonists striving valiantly to win some prize in the
great competition between the boast of wealth and
the pathetic endeavour of make-believe.

They stayed to gaze at the " creations " behind
the windows, at dummies draped in costly fabrics
such as they had only dreamed of wearing. The silks,
satins and velvets were whitened now with the thin
snow of dust that had fallen upon them, but to
Blanche and Millie they appeared still as wonders
of beauty.

For a minute or two they criticized the models.

THE SILENT CITY 139

They spoke at first in low voices, for the deep still-
ness of London held them in unconscious awe, but
as they became lost in the fascination of their sub-
ject they forgot their fear. And then they looked at
one another a little guiltily.

" No harm in seeing if the door's locked, anyway,"
said Blanche.

Millie looked over her shoulder and saw no move-
ment in the frozen streets, save the sweep of one
exploring swallow. Even the sparrows had deserted
the streets. She did not reply in words, but signified
her agreement of thought by a movement towards
the entrance.

The swing doors were not fastened, and they
entered stealthily.

They began with the touch of appraising fingers,
wandering from room to room. But most of the
rooms on the ground floor were darkened by the
drawn shutters, and no glow of light came in re-
sponse to the clicking of the electric switches that
they experimented with with persistent futility. So
they adventured into the clearly lit rooms upstairs and
experienced a fallacious sense of security in the know-
ledge that they were on the floor above the street.

Fingering gave place to still closer inspection. They
lifted the models from the stands and shook them out.
They held up gorgeous robes in front of their own
suburban dresses and admired each other and them-
selves in the numerous cheval glasses.

" Oh! bother! " exclaimed Blanche at last, " I'm
going to try on."

" Oh! B. " expostulated the more timid Millie.

140 GOSLINGS

"Well! why to goodness not? " asked her elder
sister. " Who's to be any the wiser? "

" Seems wrong, somehow," replied Millie, unable
to shake off the conventions which had so long served
her as conscience.

" Well, I am," said Blanche, and retired into a
little side room to divest herself of her own dress.
She had always shared a bedroom with her sister,
and they observed few modesties before each other,
but Blanche was mentally incapable of changing
her dress in the broad avenues of that extensive
show-room. It is true that the tall casement windows
were wide open and the place was completely over-
looked by the massive buildings opposite, but even
if the windows had been screened she would not have
changed her skirt in the publicity of that open place,
though every human being in the world were dead.

When she emerged from her dressing-room she
was transformed indeed. She went over to her still
hesitating sister.

" Do me up, Mill," she said.

Blanche had chosen well; the fine cloth walking
dress admirably fitted her well-developed young
figure. When she had discarded her hat and touched
up her hair before the glass, only her boots and her
hands remained to spoil the disguise. Well gloved
and well shod, she might have passed down the Bond
Street of the old London, and few women and no
man would have known that she had not sprung from
the ruling classes.

She posed. She stepped back from the mirror and
half-unconsciously fell to imitating the manners of

THE SILENT CITY 141

the revered aristocracy she had respectfully studied
from a distance.

In a few minutes she was joined by Millie, also
arrayed in peacock's feathers and anxious to be
" fastened."

Their excitement increased. Walking dresses gave
place to evening gowns. They lost their sense of fear
and ran into other departments searching for long
white gloves to hide the disfigurements of household
work. They paraded and bowed to each other. The
climax came when they discovered a Court dress,
immensely trained, and embroidered with gold
thread, laid by with evidences of tenderest care in
endless wrappings of tissue paper. Surely the dress of
some elegant young duchess !

For a moment they wrangled, but Blanche tri-
umphed. " You shall have it afterwards," she said,
as she ran to her dressing-room.

Millie followed in an elaborate gown of Indian
silk; a somewhat sulky Millie, inclined to resent her
duty of lady's maid. She dragged disrespectfully at
the innumerable fastenings.

" My! " ejaculated Blanche when she could in-
dulge herself in the glory of full examination before
a cheval glass in the open show-room. She struggled
with her train and when she had arranged it to her
satisfaction, threw back her shoulders and lifted her
chin haughtily.

" I ought to have some diamonds," she reflected.

" It drags round the hips," was Millie's criticism.

" You should say ' Your Majesty,' " corrected
Blanche.

142 GOSLINGS

" Oh! a Queen, are you? " asked Millie.

« Rather "

" Queen of all the Earth," sneered Millie.

Blanche's face suddenly fell. " I wonder if she
began like this," she said, and a note of fear had come
into her voice.

Millie's eyes reflected her sister's alarm.

" Oh! let's get Out of this, B.," she said, and began
to tear at the neck of her Indian silk gown.

" I wanted diamonds, too," persisted Blanche.

" Oh! B., it isn't right," said Millie. " I said it
wasn't right and you would come."

Silence descended upon them for a moment, and
then both sisters suddenly screamed and ducked,
putting up their hands to their heads.

" Goodness! What was that? " cried Blanche.

A swallow had swept in through the open window,
had curved round in one swift movement, and shot
out again into the sunlight.

" Only a bird of some sort," said Millie, but she
was trembling and on the verge of hysterics. " Do
let's get out, B."

After they had put on their own clothes
once more they became aware that they were
hungry.

" We have wasted a lot of time here," said Blanche
as they made their way out.

She did not pause to wonder how many women
had spent the best part of their lives in a precisely
similar manner.

" And we ought to have been looking for food,"
she added.

THE SILENT CITY 143

" Come on," replied Millie. " That place has given
me the creeps."

GROWING rather tired and footsore they made their
way to Piccadilly Circus, and so on to the Strand.
Everywhere they found the same conditions: a few
skeletons, a few deserted vehicles, young vegetation
taking hold wherever a pinch of soil had found an
abiding place, and over all a great silence. But food
there was none that they were able to find, though it
is probable that a careful investigation of cellars and
underground places might have furnished some
results. The more salient resources of London had
been effectively pillaged so far as the West-end was
concerned. They were too late.

In Trafalgar Square, Millie sat down and cried.
Blanche made no attempt to comfort her, but sat
wide eyed and wondering. Her mind was opening
to new ideas. She was beginning to understand that
London was incapable of supporting even the lives of
three women ; she was wrestling with the problem of
existence. Everyone had gone. Many had died; but
many more, surely, must have fled into the country.
She began to understand that she and her family
must also fly into the country.

Millie still sobbed convulsively now and again.

"Oh! Chuck it, Mill," said Blanche at last.
" We'd better be getting home."

Millie dabbed her eyes. " I'm starving," she
blubbered.

I44 GOSLINGS

" Well, so am I," returned Blanche. " That's why
I said we'd better get home. There's nothing to eat
here."

" Is — is every one dead? "

" No, they've gone off into the country, and that's
what we've got to do."

The younger girl sat up, put her hat straight,
and blew her nose. " Isn't it awful, B.? " she said.

Blanche pinched her lips together. " What are
you putting your hat straight for? " she asked.
" There's no one to see you."

" Well, you needn't make it any worse," retorted
Millie on the verge of a fresh outburst of tears.

" Oh! come on! " said Blanche, getting to her
feet.

" I don't believe I can walk home," complained
Millie; " my feet ache so."

" You'll have to wait a long time if you're going to
find a bus," returned Blanche.

Three empty taxicabs stood in the rank a few
feet away from them, but it never occurred to
either of the two young women to attempt any
experiment with these mechanisms. If the thought
had crossed their minds they would have deemed it
absurd.

" Let's go down by Victoria," suggested Blanche.
" I believe it's nearer."

In Parliament Square they disturbed a flock of
rooks, birds which had partly changed their natural
habits during the past few months and, owing to the
superabundance of one kind of food, were preying
on carrion.

THE SILENT CITY 145

" Crows," commented Blanche. " Beastly things."

" I wonder if we could get some water to drink,"
was Millie's reply.

" Well, there's the river," suggested Blanche, and
they turned up towards Westminster Bridge.

In one of the tall buildings facing the river
Blanche's attention was caught by an open door.

" Look here, Mill," she said, " we've only been
looking for shops. Let's try one of these houses. We
might find something to eat in there."

" I'm afraid," said Millie.

" What of? " sneered Blanche. " At the worst it's
skeletons, and we can come out again."

Millie shuddered. " You go," she suggested.

" Not by myself, I won't," returned Blanche.

" There you are, you see," said Millie.

" Well, it's different by yourself."

" I hate it," returned Millie with emphasis.

" So do I, in a way, only I'm fair starving," said
Blanche. " Come on."

The building was solidly furnished, and the ground
floor, although somewhat disordered, still suggested
a complacent luxury. On the floor lay a copy of the
Evening Chronicle, dated May 10; possibly one of
the last issues of a London journal. Two of the pages
were quite blank, and almost the only advertisement
was one hastily-set announcement of a patent medi-
cine guaranteed as a sure protection against the plague.
The remainder of the paper was filled with reports
of the devastation that was being wrought, reports
which were nevertheless marked by a faint spirit
of simulated confidence. Between the lines could

146 GOSLINGS

be read the story of desperate men clinging to
hope with splendid courage. There were no signs
of panic here. Groves had come out well at the
last.

The two girls hovered over this piece of ancient
history for a few minutes.

" You see," said Blanche triumphantly, " even
then, more'n two months ago, every one was making
for the country. We shall have to go, too. I told you
we should."

" I never said we shouldn't," returned Millie.
" Anyhow there's nothing to eat here."

"Not in this room, there isn't," said Blanche, " but
there might be in the kitchens. Do you know what
this place has been? "

Millie shook her head.

" It's been a man's club," announced Blanche.
" First time you've been in one, old dear."

" Come on, let's have a look downstairs, then,"
returned Millie, careless of her achievement.

In the first kitchen they found havoc : broken china
and glass, empty bottles, empty tins, cooking utensils
on the floor, one table upset, everywhere devastation
and the marks of struggle; but in none of the empty
tins was there the least particle of food. Everything
had been completely cleaned out. The rats had been
there, and had gone.

Exploring deeper, however, they were at last re-
warded. On a table stood a whole array of unopened
tins and in one of them was plunged a tin-opener,
a single stab had been given, and then, possibly,
another of these common tragedies had begun. Had

THE SILENT CITY 147

he been alone, that plunderer, or had his com-
panions fled from him in terror?

Here the two girls made a sufficient meal, and
discovered, moreover, a large store of unopened beer-
bottles. They shared the contents of one between
them, and then, feeling greatly reinvigorated, they
sought for and found two baskets, which they filled
with tinned foods. They only took away one bottle of
beer — a special treat for their mother — on account
of the weight. They remembered that they had a
long walk before them; and they were not over-
elated by their discovery; they were sick to death of
tinned meats.

In looking for the baskets they came across a single
potato that the rats had left. From it had sprung a
long, thin, etiolated shoot which had crept under
the door of the cupboard and was making its way
across the floor to the light of the window. Already
that shoot was several feet in length.

" Funny how they grow," commented Millie.

" Making for the country, I expect," replied
Blanche, " same as we shall have to do."

It was a relief to them to find their way into the
sunlight once more. Those cold, forsaken houses held
some suggestion of horror, of old activities so ab-
ruptly ended by tragedy. From these interiors
Nature was still shut off. That ghostly tendril aching
towards the light had no chance for life and re-
production. . . .

L2

148 GOSLINGS

5

THE two Gosling girls had yet one more adventure
before they toiled home with their load.

They were growing bolder, despite the gloom
and oppression of those human habitations, and
some freakish spirit prompted Blanche to suggest
that they should visit the Houses of Parliament.
After a brief demur, Millie acceded.

That great stronghold was open to them now.
They might walk the floor of the House, sit in the
Speaker's chair, penetrate into the sacred places of
the Upper Chamber.

Gone were all the rules and formulas, the intri-
cacies and precedents of an unwritten constitution,
the whole cumbrous machinery for the making of
new laws. The air was no longer disturbed by the
wranglings, evasions and cunning shifts of those
who had found here a stage for their personal ambi-
tions. The high talk of progress had died into silence
along with the struggle of parties which had played
the supreme game, side against side, for the prize of
power. Progress had been defined in this place, in
terms of human activity, human comfort. The end
in sight had been some vague conception of general
welfare through accumulated riches. And from the
sky had fallen a pestilence to change the meaning of
human terms. In three months the old conception
of wealth was gone. Money, precious stones, a thou-
sand accepted forms of value had become suddenly
worthless, of no more account than the symbol of

THE SILENT CITY 149

power which lay coated with dust on the table of
the House of law-makers. Even law itself, that slow
growth of the centuries, had become meaningless.
Who cared if some mad woman plundered every
jeweller's shop in the whole City? Who was to for-
bid theft or avenge murder? The place of traffic was
empty. Only one law was left and only one value; the
law of self-preservation, the value of food.

The sunlight fell in broad coloured shafts upon
two half-educated girls come on a plundering expe-
dition, and they might sit in the high places if they
would, and make new laws for themselves.

Blanche sat for a few moments in the Speaker's
chair.

" It's a fine big place," she remarked.

" Oh! come on, B., do," replied Millie. " I want
to get home."

As they crossed the Square, Millie looked up at
Big Ben. " Quarter-past nine," she said. " It must
have stopped."

" Well, of course, silly," replied Blanche. " All the
clocks have stopped. Who's to wind 'em? "

XII— EMIGRANT

FOR some time Mrs Gosling was quite unable to
grasp the significance of her daughters' report on the
condition of London. During the past two months
she had persuaded herself that the traffic of the
town was being resumed and that only Putney was
still desolate. She had always disapproved of Putney;
it was damp and she had never known anyone who
had lived there. It is true that the late lamented
George Gosling had been born in Putney, but that
was more than half a century ago, the place was no
doubt quite different then; and he had left Putney
and gone to live in the healthy North before he was
sixteen. Mrs Gosling was half inclined to blame
Putney for all their misfortunes — it was sure to
breed infection, being so near the river and all — and
she had become hopeful during the past month
that all would be well with them if they could once
get back to Kilburn.

" D'you mean to say you didn't see no one at
all? " she repeated in great perplexity.

" Those three we've told you about, that's all,"
said Blanche.

" Well, o' course, they're all shut up in the 'ouses,
still; afraid o' the plague and 'anging on to what
provisions they've got put by, same as us," was the
hopeful explanation Mrs Gosling put forward.

150

EMIGRANT 151

" They ain't," said Millie, and Blanche agreed.

" Well, but 'ow d'you know? " persisted the
mother. " Did you go in to the 'ouses? "

" One or two," returned Blanche evasively, " but
there wasn't no need to go in. You could see."

" Are you quite sure there was no shops open?
Not in the Strand? " Mrs Gosling laid emphasis on
the last sentence. She could not doubt the good faith
of the Strand. If that failed her, all was lost.

" Oh! can't you understand, mother," broke out
Blanche petulantly, " that the whole of London is
absolutely deserted? There isn't a soul in the streets.
There's no cabs or buses or trams or anything, and
grass growing in the middle of the road. And all the
shops have been broken into, all those that had food

in 'em, and " words failed her. " Isn't it, Millie?"

she concluded lamely.

" Awful," agreed Millie.

" Well, I can't understand it," said Mrs Gosling,
not yet fully convinced. She considered earnestly for
a few moments and then asked : " Did you go into
Charing Cross Post Office? They'd sure to be open."

" Yes! " lied Blanche, " and we could have taken
all the money in the place if we'd wanted, and no one
any the wiser."

Mrs Gosling looked shocked. " I 'ope my gels'll
never come to that," she said. Her girls, with a
wonderful understanding of their mother's opinions,
had omitted to mention their raid on the Knights-
bridge emporium.

" No one'd ever know," said Millie.

" There's One who would," replied Mrs Gosling

152 GOSLINGS

gravely, and strangely enough, perhaps, the two girls
looked uneasy, but they were thinking less of the
commandments miraculously given to Moses than of
the probable displeasure of the Vicar of St John the
Evangelist's Church in Kilburn.

" Well, we've got to do something, anyhow," said
Blanche, after a pause. " I mean we'll have to get
out of this and go into the country."

" We might go to your uncle's in Liverpool," sug-
gested Mrs Gosling, tentatively.

" It's a long walk," remarked Blanche.

Mrs Gosling did not grasp the meaning of this
objection. " Well, I think we could afford third-class,
she said. " Besides, though we 'aven't corresponded
much of late years, I've always been under the im-
pression that your uncle is doin' well in Liverpool;
and at such a time as this I'm sure 'e'll do the right
thing, though whether it would be better to let 'im
know we're comin' or not I'm not quite sure."

" Oh! dear! " sighed Blanche, " I do wish you'd try
to understand, mother. There aren't any trains.
There aren't any posts or telegraphs. Wherever we
go we've just got to walk. Haven't we, Millie? "

Millie began to snivel. " It's 'orrible," she said.

" Well I can't understand it," repeated Mrs Gos-
ling.

By degrees, however, the controversy took a new
shape. Granting for the moment the main conten-
tion that London was uninhabitated, Mrs Gosling
urged that it would be a dangerous, even a foolhardy,
thing to venture into the country. If there was no
Government there would be nolawand order, was the

EMIGRANT 153

substance of her argument ; government in her mind
being represented by its concrete presentation in the
form of the utterly reliable policeman. Further-
more, she pointed out, that they did not know any-
one in the country, with the exception of a too-
distant uncle in Liverpool, and that there would be
nowhere for them to go.

" We shall have to work," said Blanche, who was
surely inspired by her glimpse of the silent city.

" Well, we've got nearly a 'undred pounds left of
what your poor father drew out o' the bank before
we shut ourselves up," said her mother.

" I suppose we could buy things in the country,"
speculated Blanche.

" You seem set on the country for some reason,"
said Mrs Gosling with a touch of temper.

" Well, we've got to get food," returned Blanche,
raising her voice. " We can't live on air."

" And if food's to be got cheaper in the country
than in London," snapped Mrs Gosling, " my ex-
perience goes for nothing, but, of course, you know
best, if I am your mother."

" There isn't any food in London, cheap or dear,
I keep telling you," said Blanche, and left the room
angrily, slamming the door behind her.

Millie sat moodily biting her nails.

" Blanche lets 'er temper get the better of 'er,"
remarked Mrs Gosling addressing the spaces of the
kitchen in which they were sitting.

" It's right, worse luck," said Millie. " We shall
have to go. I 'ate it nearly as much as you do."

The argument thus begun was continued with few

154 GOSLINGS

intermissions for a whole week. A thunderstorm, fol-
lowed by two days of overcast weather, came to the
support of the older woman. One thing was certain
among all these terrible perplexities, namely, that you
couldn't start off for a trip to the country on a wet
day.

Meanwhile their stores continued to diminish,
and one afternoon Mrs Gosling consented to take a
walk with Blanche as far as Hammersmith Broadway.

The sight of that blank desert impressed her.
Blanche pointed out the house in which she had seen
the two women five days before, but no one was look-
ing out of the window on that afternoon. Perhaps
they had fled to the country, or were occupied else-
where in the house, or perhaps they had left London
by the easier way which had become so general in the
past few months.

When she returned to the Putney house, Mrs Gos-
ling wept and wished she, too, was dead, but she
consented at last to Blanche's continually urged pro-
position, in so far as she expressed herself willing
to make a move of some sort. She thought they
might, at least, go back and have a look at Wisteria
Grove. And if Kilburn had, indeed, fallen as low as
Hammersmith, then there was apparently no help
for it and they must try their luck in the waste and
desolation of the country. Perhaps some farmer's
wife might take them in for a time, until they had
a chance to look about them. They had nearly a hun-
dred pounds in gold.

The girls found a builder's trolley in a yard near
by, a truck of sturdy build on two wheels with a long

EMIGRANT 155

handle. It bore marks of having held cement, and
there were weeds growing in one end of it, but
after it had been brought home and thoroughly
scrubbed, it looked quite a presentable means for the
transport of the " necessaries " they proposed to take
with them.

They made too generous an estimate of essentials
at first, piling their truck too high for safety and
overtaxing their strength; but that problem, like
many others, was finally solved for them by the clear-
sighted guidance of necessity.

They started one morning — a Monday if their
calculations were not at fault — about two hours after
breakfast. Mrs Gosling and Millie pushed behind,
and Blanche, the inspired one, went before, pulled
by the handle of the pole and gave the others their
direction.

It is possible that they were the last women to
leave London.

By chance they discovered the Queen of all the
Earth on a doorstep near Addison Road. She was
quite dead, but they did not despoil her of the jewels
with which she was still covered.

MRS GOSLING was a source of trouble from the out-
set. She had lived her life indoors. In the Wisteria
Grove days, she never spent two hours of the twenty-
four out of the house. Some times for a whole week
she had not gone out at all. It was a mark of their rise
in the world that all the tradesmen called for orders.

1 56 GOSLINGS

She had found little necessity to buy in shops during
recent years. And so, very surely, she had grown more
and more limited in her outlook. Her attention had
become concentrated on the duties of the housewife.
She had not kept any servant, a charwoman who
came for a few hours three times a week had
done all that the mistress of the house had not dared,
in face of neighbourly criticism — in her position she
could not be seen washing down the little tiled path
to the gate nor whitening the steps.

The effect of this cramped existence on Mrs Gos-
ling would not have been noticeable under the old
conditions. She had become a specialized creature,
admirably adapted to her place in the old scheme of
civilization. No demand was ever made upon her
resources other than those familiar demands which
she was so perfectly educated to supply. Even when
the plague had come, she had not been compelled to
alter her mode of life. She had made trouble enough
about the lack of many things she had once believed
to be necessary — familiar foods, soap and the thou-
sand little conveniences that the twentieth century
inventor had patented to assist the domestic economy
of the small householder; but the trouble was not too
great to be overcome. The adaptability required
from her was within the scope of her specialized
vision. She could learn to do without flour, butter,
lard, milk, sugar and the other things, but she could
not learn to think on unfamiliar lines.

That was the essence of her trouble. She was
divorced from a permanent home. She was asked to
walk long miles in the open air. Worst of all, she was

EMIGRANT 157

called upon for initiative, ingenuity; she was required
to exercise her imagination in order to solve a pro-
blem with which she was quite unfamiliar. She was
expected to develop the potentialities of the wild
thing, and to extort food from Nature. The whole
problem was beyond her comprehension.

The sight of Kilburn was a great blow to her. She
had hoped against hope that here, at least, she would
find some semblance of the life she had known. It
had seemed so impossible to her that Aiken, the
butcher's, or Hobb's, the grocer's, would not be
open as usual, and the vision of those two desolated
and ransacked shops — the latter with but a few
murderous spears of plate-glass left in its once
magnificent windows — depressed her to tears.

So shaken was she by the sight of these horrors that
Blanche and Millie raised no objection to sleeping
that night in the house in Wisteria Grove. Indeed,
the two girls were almost tired out, although it was
yet early in the afternoon. The truck had become
very heavy in the course of the last two miles ; and
they had had considerable difficulty in negotiating
the hill by Westbourne Park Station.

Mrs Gosling was still weeping as she let herself in to
her old home, and she wept as she prowled about
the familiar rooms and noted the dust which had
fallen like snow on every surface which would support
it. And for the first time the loss of her husband
came home to her. She had been almost glad when
he had vanished from the Putney house — in that
place she had only seen him in his new character
of tyrant. Here, among familiar associations, she

158 GOSLINGS

recalled the f aft that he had been a respeftable, com-
placent, hard-working, successful man who had
never given her cause for trouble, a man who did not
drink nor run after other women, who held a posi-
tion in the Church and was looked up to by the
neighbourhood. According to her definition he had
certainly been an ideal husband. It is true that
they had dropped any pretence of being in love with
one another after Blanche was born, but that was
only natural.

Mrs Gosling sat on the bed she had shared with
him so long and hoped he was happy. He was ; but if
she could have seen the nature of his happiness the
sight would have given her no comfort. Vaguely she
pictured him in some strange Paradise, built upon
those conceptions of the mediaeval artists, mainly
Italians, which have supplied the ideals of the ortho-
dox. She saw an imperfectly transfigured and still
fleshly George Gosling, who did unaccustomed things
with a harp, was dressed in exotic garments and
was on terms with certain hybrids, largely woman
but partly bird, who were clearly recognizable as the
angelic host. If she had been a Mohammedan, her
vision would have accorded far more nearly with the
faft.

3

THE successful animal is that which is adapted to its
circumstances. Herbert Spencer would appear fool-
ish and incapable in the society of the young wits
who frequent the private bar; he might be described
by them as an old Johnny who knew nothing about

EMIGRANT 159

life. Mrs Gosling in her own home had been a ruler;
she had had authority over her daughters, and,
despite the usual evidences of girlish precocity, she
had always been mistress of the situation. In the
affairs of household management she was facile prin-
ceps, and she commanded the respecl: accorded to the
eminent in any form of specialized activity. But even
on this second morning of their emigration it be-
came clear to Blanche that her mother had ceased
to rule, and must become a subordinate. A certain
respecl: was due to her in her parental relation, but
if she could not be coaxed she must be coerced.

" She'll be better when we get her right away
from here," was Blanche's diagnosis, and Millie,
who had also achieved some partial realization of
the necessities imposed by the new conditions,
nodded in agreement.

" She wants to stop here altogether, and, of
course, we can't," she said.

" We shall starve if we do," said Blanche.

From that time Mrs Gosling dropped into the
humiliating position of a kind of mental incapable
who must be humoured into obedience.

The first, and in many ways the most difficult, task
was to persuade her away from Kilburn. She clung
desperately to that stronghold of her old life.

" I'm too old to change at my age," she protested,
and when the alternative was clearly put before her,
she accepted it with a flaccidity that was as aggra-
vating as it was unfightable.

" I'd sooner die 'ere," said Mrs Gosling, " than
go trapesing about the fields lookin' for somethin' to

160 GOSLINGS

eat. I simply couldn't do it. It's different for you two

gels, no doubt. You go and leave me 'ere."

Millie might have been tempted to take her
mother at her word, but Blanche never for a
moment entertained the idea of leaving her mother
behind.

" Very well, mother," she said, desperately, " if
you won't come we must all stop here and starve, I
suppose. We've got enough food to last a fortnight
or so."

As she spoke she looked out of the window of that
little suburban house, and for the first time in her
life a thought came to her of the strangeness of pre-
ferring such an inconvenient little box to the adven-
ture of the wider spaces of open country. Outside,
the sun was shining brilliantly, but the windows
were dim with dust and cobwebs.

Yet her mother was comparatively happy in this
hovel; she would find delight in cleaning it, although
there was no one to appraise the result of her effort.
She was a specialized animal with habits precisely
analogous to the instincts of other animals and in-
sects. There were insects who could only live in filth
and would die miserably if removed from their
natural surroundings. Mrs Gosling was a suburban-
house insect who would perish in the open air. After
all, the chief difference between insects and men is
that the insect is born perfectly adapted to its spe-
cialized existence, man finds, or is forced into, a place
in the scheme after he has come to maturity. . . .

" I can't see why you shouldn't leave me behind,"
pleaded Mrs Gosling.

EMIGRANT 161

" Well, we won't," replied Blanche, still looking
out of the window.

" It's wicked of you to make us stop here and
starve," put in Millie. " And even you must see that
we shall starve."

Mrs Gosling wept feebly. She had wept much
during the past twenty-four hours. " Where can we
go? " she wailed.

" There's country on the other side of Harrow,"
said Blanche.

The thought of Harrow or Timbuctoo was equally
repugnant to Mrs Gosling.

Then Millie had an idea. " Well, we only brought
four bottles of water with us," she said, " where are
we going to get any more in Kilburn? "

Mrs Gosling racked her brain in the effort to re-
member some convenient stream in the neighbour-
hood. " It may rain," she said feebly at last.

Blanche turned from the window and pointed to
the blurred prospect of sunlit street. " We might be
dead before the rain came," she said.

They wore her out in the end.

WITH Harrow as an immediate objective, they toiled
up Willesden Lane with their hand-cart early the
next morning. Blanche took that route because it
was familiar to her, and after passing Willesden
Green, she followed the tram lines.

As they got away from London they came upon
evidences of the exodus which had preceded them.

M

1 62 GOSLINGS

Bodies of women, for the most part no longer mal-
adorous, were not infrequent, and pieces of house-
hold furniture, parcels of clothing, boxes, trunks and
smaller impedimenta lay by the roadside, the super-
fluities of earlier loads that had been lightened, how-
ever reluctantly.

Mrs Gosling blenched at the sight of every body —
only a few of them could be described as skeletons —
and protested that they were all going to their death,
but Blanche kept on resolutely with a white, set face,
and as Millie followed her example, if with rather
less show of temerity, there was no choice but to
follow. When the gradients were favourable the girls
helped their mother on to the truck and gave her a
lift. She was a feeble walker.

Not till they reached Sudbury did they see another
living being of their own species, or any sign of
human habitation in the long rows of dirty houses.

The great surge of migration had spread out from
the centre and become absorbed in circles of ever-
widening amplitude. The great entity of London
had eaten its way so far outwards in to arable and
pasturage that within a ten-mile radius from
Charing Cross not a thousand women could be found
who had been able to obtain any promise of security
from the products of the soil. And although there
were great open spaces of land, such as Wembley
Park, which had to be crossed in the journey out-
wards, the exiles had been unable to wait until such
time as seed could be transformed into food by the
alchemy of Nature. So the pressure had been con-
tinually outwards, forcing the emigrants toward the

EMIGRANT 163

more distant farms where some fraction of them, at
least, might find work and food until the coming of
the harvest. In Kent, vegetables were comparatively
plentiful. In Northern Middlesex and Buckingham-
shire the majority had to depend upon animal food.
But in all the Home Counties and in the neighbour-
hood of every large town, famine was following hard
upon the heels of the plague, and 70 per cent of the
town-dwelling women and children who had escaped
the latter visitation died of starvation and exposure
before the middle of August.

In the first inner ring, still sparsely populated,
were to be found those who had had vegetable gar-
dens and had been vigorous enough to protect them-
selves against the flood of migration which had swept
up against them.

It was the first signs of this inner ring that the
Goslings discovered at Sudbury.

THEY came upon a little row of cottages, standing
back a few yards from the road. All three women had
been engaged in pushing their trolly up an ascent,
and with heads down, and all their physical energies
concentrated upon their task, they did not notice
the startling difference between these cottages and
other houses they had passed, until they stopped to
take breath at the summit of the hill.

Mrs Gosling had immediately seated herself upon
the sloping pole of the trolly handle. She was breath-
ing heavily and had her hands pressed to her sides.

M2

164 GOSLINGS

Millie leaned against the side of the trolly, her eyes
still on the ground. But Blanche had thrown back
her shoulders and opened her lungs, and she saw the
banner of smoke that flew from the middle of the
three chimney-stacks — smoke, in this wilderness,
smoke the sign of human life ! To Blanche it seemed
the fulfilment of a great hope. She had begun to
wonder if all the world were dead.
"Oh! "she gasped. "Look!"
They looked without eagerness, anticipating some
familiar horror.

" Ooh! " echoed Millie, when she, too, had re-
cognized the harbinger. But Mrs Gosling did not
raise her eyes high enough.
" What? " she asked stupidly.
"There's some one living in that cottage," said
Blanche, and pointed upwards to the soaring pen-
nant.

Mrs Gosling's face brightened. " Well, to be sure,"
she said, " I wonder if they'd let me sit down and
rest for a few minutes? And perhaps they might be
willing to sell me a glass of milk. I'm sure I'd pay a
good price for it."

" We can see, anyway," replied Millie, and they
roused themselves and pushed on eagerly. The cot-
tage was not more than thirty yards away.

Before they reached it, a woman came to the door-
way, stared at them for a moment and then came
down to the little wooden gate.

She was a thick-set woman of fifty or so, with iron
grey hair cut close to her head. She wore a "tweed
skirt which did not reach the tops of her heavily

EMIGRANT 165

soled, high boots. She looked capable, energetic and
muscular. And in her hand she carried about three
feet of stout broomstick.

She did not speak until the little procession halted
before her gate, and then she pointed meaningly up
the road with her broomstick and said: " Go on.
You can't stop here." She spoke with the voice and
inflection of an educated woman.

Blanche paused in the acl: of setting down the
trolly handle. Mrs Gosling and Millie stared in
amazement; they had been prepared to weep on the
neck of this human friend, found at last in the awful
desert of Middlesex.

" We only wanted to buy a little milk," stammered
Blanche, no less astonished than her mother and
sister.

The big woman looked them over with something
of pity and contempt. " I can see you're not dan-
gerous," she sneered and crossed her great bare fore-
arms over the top of the gate." Only three poor
feckless idiots going begging."

" We're not begging," retorted Blanche. " We've
got money and we're willing to pay."

" Money! " repeated the woman. She looked up at
the sky and nodded her head, as though beseeching
pity for these feeble creatures. " My dear girl," she
went on, " what do you suppose is the good of
money in this world? You can't eat money, nor
wear it, nor use it to light a fire. Now, if you'd
offered me a box of matches, you should have had all
the milk I can spare."

" Well, I never," put in Mrs Gosling, who had

166 GOSLINGS

feebly come to rest again on the handle of the
trolly.

" No, my good woman, you never did," said the
stranger. " You never could and I should say the
chances are that you never will."

Millie was intimidated and shrinking, even Blanche
looked a little nervous, but Mrs Gosling was inca-
pable of feeling fear of a fellow-woman. " You can't
mean as you won't sell us a glass of milk? " she
said.

" Have you got a box of matches you'll exchange
for it? " asked the stranger. " I've got a burning
glass I stole in Harrow, but you can't depend on the
sun."

" No, nor 'aven't 'ad, the last three weeks," said
Mrs Gosling. " But if you've more money a'ready
than you know what to do with, I should 'ave
thought as you'd 'a been willing to spare a glass o'
milk for charity's sake."

The stranger regarded her petitioner with a hard
smile. " Charity's sake? " she said. " Do you realize
that I've had to defend this place like a fort against
thousands of your sort? I've killed three mad women
who fought me for possession and buried 'em in the
orchard like cats. I held out through the first rush
and I can hold out now easily enough. You three
are the first I've seen for a month, and before that
they'd begun to get weak and poor. These are your
daughters, I suppose, and the three of you had
always depended upon some fool of a man to keep
you. Yes? Well, you deserve all you've got. Now
you can start and do a little healthy, useful work for

EMIGRANT 167

yourselves. I've no pity for you. I've got a damned
fool of a sister and an old fool of a mother to keep in
there," she pointed to the cottage with her broom-
stick. " Parasitic like you, both of 'em, and pretty
well all the use they are is to keep the fire alight.
No, my good woman, you get no charity from
me."

When she had finished her speech, which she de-
livered with a fluency and point that suggested
familiarity with the platform, the stranger crossed
her arms again over the gate and stared Mrs Gosling
out of countenance.

" Come along, my dears," said that outraged lady,
getting wearily to her feet. " I wouldn't wish your
ears soiled by such language from a woman as 'as
forgotten the manners of a lady. But, there, poor
thing, I've no doubt 'er 'ead's been turned with all
this trouble."

The stranger smiled grimly and made no reply,
but as the Goslings were moving away, she called out
to them suddenly: " Hi! You! There's a witless
creature along the road who'll probably help you.
The house is up a side road. Bear round to the
right."

" What a beast," muttered Blanche when they had
gone on a few yards.

" One o' them * new ' women, my dear," panted
Mrs Gosling, who remembered the beginning of the
movement and still clung to the old terminology.
'Orrible unsexed creatures! I remember how your
poor father used to 'ate 'em ! "

" I'd like to get even with her," said Millie.

i68 GOSLINGS

They bore to the right, and so avoided two
turnings which led up repulsive-looking hills, but
they missed the side road.

" I'm sure we must have passed it," complained
Mrs Gosling at last. Her sighs had been increasing
in volume and poignancy for the past half-mile,
and the prospect of uninhabited country which
lay immediately around her she found infinitely
dispiriting.

" There isn't an 'ouse in sight," she added, " and
I really don't believe I can walk much farther."

Blanche stopped and looked over the fields on
her right towards London. In the distance, blurred
by an oily wriggle of heat haze, she could see the last
wave of suburban villas which had broken upon this
shore of open country. They had left the town
behind them at last, but they had not found what
they sought. This little arm of land which cut off
Harrow and Wealdstone from the mother lake of
London had not offered sufficient temptation to
delay their forerunners in the search for food. Most
of them, with a true instinct for what they sought,
had followed the main road into the Chiltern Hills,
and those who for some cause or another had
wandered into this side track had pushed on, even
as Blanche and Millie would have done had they
not been dragged back by their mother's complaints.

The sun was falling a little towards the west, and
bird and animal life, which had seemed to rest
during the intenser heat of mid-day, was stirring
and calling all about them. A rabbit lolloped into
the road, a few yards away, pricked up its ears,

EMIGRANT 169

stared for an instant, and then scuttled to cover. A
blackbird flew out of the hedge and fled chattering
up the ditch. The air was murmurous with the hum
of innumerable insects, and above Mrs Gosling's
head hovered a group of flies which ever and again
bobbed down as if following some concerted plan
of action, and tried to settle on the poor woman's
heated face.

" Oh! get away, do! " she panted, and flapped a
futile handkerchief.

" How quiet it is! " said Blanche; and although
the air was full of sound it did indeed appear that
a great hush had fallen over the earth. No motor-
horn threateningly bellowed its automatic demand
for right of way; there was no echo of hoofs nor
grind of wheels; no call of children's voices, nor
even the bark of a dog. The wild things had the
place to themselves again, and the sound of their
movements called for no response from civilized
minds. The ears of the Goslings heard, but did not
note these, to them, useless evidences of life. They
were straining and alert for the voice of humanity.

" I don't know when I've felt the 'eat so much,"
said Mrs Gosling suddenly, and Blanche and Millie
both started.

" Hush! " said Blanche, and held up a warning
finger.

In the distance they heard a sound like the closing
of a gate, and then, very clear and small, a feminine
voice. ' Chuck! chuck! chuck! " it said. " Chuck!
chuck I chuck///"

'' I told you we'd passed it," said Mrs Gosling

i/o GOSLINGS

triumphantly. They turned the trolly and began to
retrace their footsteps. Their eager eyes tried to
peer through the spinney of trees which shut them
off from the south. Once or twice they stopped to
listen. The voice was fainter now, but they could
hear the squawk of greedily competitive fowls.

XIII— DIFFERENCES

THE only side road they could find proved to be no
more than a track through the little wood. They
almost passed it a second time, and hesitated at the
gate — a sturdy five-barred gate bearing " Private "
on a conspicuous label — debating whether this
" could be right." They still suffered a spasm of fear
at the thought of trespass, and to open this gate and
march up an unknown private road pushing a hand-
cart seemed to them an act of terrible aggression.

" We might leave the cart just inside," suggested
Blanche.

" And get our food stole," said Mrs Gosling.

" There's no one about," urged Blanche.

" There's that broomstick woman," said Millie.
" She may have followed us."

" I'm sure I dunno if it's safe to go foragin' in
among them trees, neither," continued Mrs Gosling.
" Are you sure this is right, Blanche? "

" Well, of course, I'm not sure," replied Blanche,
with a touch of temper.

They peered through the trees and listened, but
no sign of a house was to be seen, and all was now
silent save for the long drone of innumerable bees
about their afternoon business.

171

172 GOSLINGS

" Oh! come on! " said Blanche at last. She was
rapidly learning to solve all their problems by this
simple formula. . . .

In the wood they found refuge from those
attendant flies which had hung over them so
persistently.

Mrs Gosling gave a final flick with her handker-
chief and declared her relief. " It's quite pleasant in
'ere," she said, " after the 'eat."

The two girls also seemed to find new vigour in
the shade of the trees.

" We have got a cheek ! " said Millie, with a
giggle.

" Well! needs must when the devil drives,"
returned Mrs Gosling, " and our circumstances is
quite out of the ordinary. Besides which, there can't
be any 'arm in offerin' to buy a glass of milk."

Blanche tugged at the trolley handle with a
flicker of impatience. Why would her mother be so
foolish? Surely she must see that everything was
different now? Blanche was beginning to wonder at
and admire the marvel of her own intelligence.
How much cleverer she was than the others! How
much more ready to appreciate and adapt herself to
change ! They could not understand this new state of
things, but she could, and she prided herself on her
powers of discrimination.

" Everything's different now," she said to herself.
" We can go anywhere and do anything, almost.
It's like as if we were all starting off level again, in a
way." She felt uplifted: she took extraordinary
pleasure in her own realization of fa6ls. A strange,

DIFFERENCES 173

new power had come to her, a power to enjoy life,
through mastery. " Everything's different now,"
she repeated. She was conscious of a sense of pity
for her mother and sister.

THE road through the wood curved sharply round
to the right, and they came suddenly upon a
clearing, and saw the house in front of them. It was
a long, low house, smothered in roses and creepers,
and it stood in a wild garden surrounded by a breast-
high wall of red brick. At the edge of the clearing
several cows were lying under the shade of the trees,
reflectively chewing the cud with slow, deliberate
enjoyment, while one, solitary, stood with its head
over the garden gate, motionless, save for an
occasional petulant whisp of its ropey tail.

" Now, then, what are we going to do? " asked
Mrs Gosling.

The procession halted, and the three women
regarded the guardian cow with every sign of
dismay.

" Shoo! " said Millie feebly, flapping her hands;
and Blanche repeated the intimidation with greater
force; but the cow merely acknowledged .the
salutation by an irritable sweep of its tail.

' 'Orrid brute! " muttered Mrs Gosling, and
flicked her handkerchief in the direction of the
brute's quarters.

;< I know," said Blanche, conceiving a subtle
strategy. " We'll drive it away with the cart." She

174 GOSLINGS

turned the trolly round, and the three of them
grasping the pole, they advanced slowly and warily
to the charge, pushing their siege ram before them.
They made a slight detour to achieve a flank attack
and allow the enemy a clear way of retreat.

" Oh, dear! what are you doing? " said a voice
suddenly, and the three startled Goslings nearly
dropped the pole in their alarm — they had been so
utterly absorbed in their campaign.

A young woman of sixteen or seventeen, very
brown, hot and dishevelled, was regarding them
from the other side of the garden wall with a stare
of amazement that even as they turned was flickering
into laughter.

" It's that great brute by the gate, my dear,"
said Mrs Gosling, " and we've just "

" You don't mean Alice? " interrupted the young
woman. " Oh! you couldn't go charging poor dear
Alice with a great cart like that ! Three of you, too! "

" Is its name Alice? " asked Blanche stupidly. She
did not feel equal to this curious occasion.

" Its name ! " replied the young woman, with
scorn. " Her name's Alice, if that's what you mean."
She shook back the hair from her eyes and moved
down to the gate. The cow acknowledged her
presence by an indolent toss of the head.

" Oh! but my sweet Alice! " protested the young
woman; " you must move and let these funny people
come in. It really isn't good for you, dear, to stand
about in the sun like this, and you'd much better go
and lie down in the shade for a bit! " She gently
pulled the gate from under the cow's chin, and then,

DIFFERENCES 175

laying her hands flat on its side, made as if to push
it out of the way.

" Well, I never! " declared Mrs Gosling, regarding
the performance with much the same awe as she
might have vouchsafed to a lion-tamer in a circus.
" 'Oo'd 'ave thought it'd 'a been that tame? "

The cow, after a moment's resistance, moved off
with a leisurely walk in the direction of the wood.

" Now, you funn'y people, what do you want? "
asked the young woman.

Mrs Gosling began to explain, but Blanche
quickly interposed. " Oh! do be quiet, mother;
you don't understand," she said, and continued,
before her mother could remonstrate, " We've come
from London."

" Goodness ! " commented the young woman.

" And we want " Blanche hesitated. She was

surprised to find that in the light of her wonderful
discovery it was not so easy to define precisely what
they ought to want. As the broomstick woman had
said, they were " beggars." Fairly confronted with
the problem, Blanche saw no alternative but a
candid acknowledgment of the fact.

" You want feeding, of course," put in the young
woman. " They all do. You needn't think you're the
first. We've had dozens! "

A solution presented itself to Blanche. " We don't
really want food," she said. " We've got a lot of
tinned things left still, only we're ill with eating
tinned things. I thought, perhaps, you might be
willing to let us have some milk and eggs and
vegetables in exchange? "

1 76 GOSLINGS

" That's sensible enough," commented the young
woman. " If you only knew the things we have been
offered! Money chiefly, of course " — Mrs Gosling
opened her mouth, but Blanche frowned and shook
her head — " and it does seem as if money's about as
useless as buttons. In fact, I'd sooner have buttons —
you can use them. But the other funny things — bits
of old furniture, warming-pans, jewellery! You
should have heard Mrs Isaacson! She was a Jewess
who came from Hampstead a couple of months ago,
and she had a lot of jewels she kept in a bag tied
round her waist under her skirt; and when Aunt
May and I simply had to tell her to go she tried to
bribe us with an old brooch and rubbish. She was a
terror. But, I say " — she looked at the sun — " I've
got lots of things to do before sunset." She
paused, and looked at the three Goslings. " Look
here," she went on, " are you all right? You seem
all right."

Again Mrs Gosling began to reply, but Blanche
was too quick for her. " Tell me what you mean by
' all right ' ? " she asked, raising her voice to drown
her mother's " Well, I never did 'ear such "

" Well, of course, mother'll give you any mortal
thing you want," replied the young woman at the
gate. " Dear old mater! She simply won't think of
what we're going to do in the winter; and I mean,
if you come in for to-night, say, and we let you have
a few odd things, you won't go and plant yourselves
on us like that Mrs Isaacson and one or two others,
because if you do, Aunt May and I will have to
turn you out, you know."

DIFFERENCES 177

" What we 'ave we'll pay for," said Mrs Gosling
with dignity.

The young woman smiled. " Oh, I dare «ay! " she
said; " pay us with those pretty little yellow counters
that aren't the least good to anyone. You wait here
half a jiff. I'll find Aunt May."

She ran up the path and entered the house. A
moment later they heard her calling " Aunt May!
Auntie — Axm-tee! " somewhere out at the back.

" Let's 'ope 'er Aunt May'll 'ave more common
sense," remarked Mrs Gosling.

Blanche turned on her almost fiercely. " For
goodness sake, mother," she said, " do try and get
it out of your head, if you can, that we can buy
things with money. Can't you see that everything's
different? Can't you see that money's no good, that
you can't eat it, or wear it, or light a fire with it,
like that other woman said? Can't you understand,
or won't you? "

Mrs Gosling gaped in amazement. It was in-
credible that the mind of Blanche should also have
been distorted by this terrible heresy. She turned in
sympathy to Millie, who had taken her mother's
seat on the pole of the trolly, but Millie frowned
and said:

" B.'s right. You can't buy things with money;
not here, anyway. What'd they do with money if
they got it? "

Mrs Gosling looked at the trees, at the cows
dng at the edge of the wood, at the sunlit fields

iyond the house, but she saw nothing which
iggested an immediate use for gold coin.

178 GOSLINGS

" Lemme sit down, my dear," she said. " What

with the 'eat and all this walkin' Oh! what

wouldn't I give for a cup o' tea! "

Millie got up sulkily and leaned against the wall.
" I suppose they'll let us stop here to-night, B.? "
she asked.

" If we don't make fools of ourselves," replied
Blanche, spitefully.

Mrs Gosling drooped. No inspiration had come
to her as it had come to her daughter. The older
woman had become too specialized. She swayed her
head, searching — like some great larva dug up from
its refuse heap — confused and feeble in this new
strange place of light and air.

And as Blanche had repeated to herself " Every-
thing's different," so Mrs Gosling seized a phrase
and clung to it as to some explanation of this
horrible perplexity. " I can't understand it," she
said; " I cartt understand it! "

AUNT MAY appeared after a long interval — a thin,
brown-faced woman of forty or so. She wore a very
short skirt, a man's jacket and an old deerstalker hat,
and she carried a pitchfork. She must have brought
the pitchfork as an emblem of authority, but she
did not handle it as the other woman had handled
her broomstick. The murderous pitchfork appeared
little more deadly in her keeping than does the mace
in the House of Commons, but as an emblem the
pitchfork was infinitely more effective.

DIFFERENCES 179

Aunt May's questions were pertinent and search-
ing, and after a few brief explanations had been
offered to her she drove off the young woman, her
niece, whom she addressed as " Allie," to perform
the many duties which were her share of the day's
work.

Allie went, laughing.

" You can sleep here to-night," announced Aunt
May. " We shall have a meal all together soon after
sunset. Till then you can talk to my sister, who's an
invalid. She's always eager for news."

She took charge of them as if she were the matron
of a workhouse receiving new inmates.

" You'd better bring your truck into the garden,"
she said, " or Alice will be turning everything over.
Inquisitive brute! " she added, snapping her fingers
at the cow, who had returned, and stood within a
few feet of them, eyeing the Goslings with a slow,
dull wonder — a mournfully sleepy beast whose
furiously wakeful tail seemed anxious to rouse its
owner out of her torpor.

The invalid sister sat by the window of a small
room that faced west and overlooked the luxuriance
of what was still recognizably a flower-garden.

" My sister, Mrs Pollard," said Aunt May sharply,
and then addressing the woman who sat huddled in
shawls by the window, she added: "Three more
strays, Fanny — from London, Allie tells me." She
went out quickly, closing the door with a vigour
which indicated little tolerance for invalid nerves.

Mrs Pollard stretched out a delicate white hand.
" Please come and sit near me," she said, " and tell

N2

i8o GOSLINGS

me about London. It is so long since I have had any

news from there. Perhaps you might be able "

she broke off, and looked at the three strangers with
a certain pathetic eagerness.

" I'll take me bonnet off, ma'am, if you'll excuse
me," remarked Mrs Gosling. She felt at home once
more within the delightful shelter of a house,
although slightly overawed by the aspect of the
room and its occupant. About both there was an
air of that class dignity to which Mrs Gosling knew
she could never attain. " I don't know when I've
felt the 'eat as I 'ave to-day," she remarked
politely.

" Has it been hot? " asked Mrs Pollard. " To me
the days all seem so much alike. I want you to tell
me, were there any young men in London when you
left? You haven't seen any young man who at all
resembles this photograph, have you? "

Mrs Gosling stared at the silver-framed photo-
graph which Mrs Pollard took from the table at her
side, stared and shook her head.

" We haven't seen a single man of any kind for
two months," said Blanche, " not a single one.
Have we, Millie? "

Millie, sitting rather stiffly on her chair, shook
her head. " It's terrible," she said. " I'm sure I don't
know where they can have all gone to."

Mrs Pollard did not reply for a moment. She
looked steadfastly out of the window, and tears,
which she made no attempt to restrain, chased
each other in little jerks down her smooth pale
cheeks.

DIFFERENCES 181

Mrs Gosling pinched her mouth into an expres-
sion of suffering sympathy, and shook her head at
her daughters to enforce silence. Was she not, also,
a widow?

After a short pause, Mrs Pollard fumbled in her
lap and discovered a black-bordered pocket-hand-
kerchief— a reminiscence, doubtless, of some earlier
bereavement. Her expression had been in no way
distorted as she wept, and after the tears had been
wiped away no trace of them disfigured her delicate
face. Her voice was still calm and sweet as she
said:

" I am very foolish to go on hoping. I loved too
much, and this trial has been sent to teach me that
all love but One is vain, that I must not set my
heart upon things of the earth. And yet I go on
hoping that my poor boy was not cut off in Sin."

"Dear, dear!" murmured Mrs Gosling. "You
musn't take it to 'eart too much, ma'am. Boys will
be a little wild and no doubt our 'eavenly Father
will make excuses."

Mrs Pollard shook her head. " If it had only been
a little wildness," she said, " I should have hope.
He is, indeed, just and merciful, slow to anger and
of great kindness, but my poor Alfred became
tainted with the terrible doctrines of Rome. It has
been the greatest grief of my life, and I have known
much pain. ..." And again the tears slowly welled
up and fell silently down that smooth, unchanging
face.

Mrs Gosling sniffed sympathetically. The two
girls glanced at one another with slightly raised

182 GOSLINGS

eyebrows and Blanche almost invisibly shrugged her
shoulders.

The warm evening light threw the waxen-faced,
white-shawled figure of the woman in the window
into high relief. Her look of ecstatic resignation was
that of some wonderful mediaeval saint returned from
the age of vision and miracle to a recently purified
earth in which the old ideas of saintship had again
become possible. Her influence was upon the room
in which she sat. The sounds of the world outside,
the evening chorus of wild life, the familiar noise of
the farm, seemed to blend into a remote music of
prayer — " Kyrie Eleison! Christe Eleison! " Within
was a great stillness, as of a thin and bloodless purity;
the long continuance of a single thought found some
echo in every material object. While the silence
lasted everything in that room was responsive to
this single keynote of anaemic virtue.

Mrs Gosling tried desperately to weep without
noise, and even the two girls, falling under the spell,
ceased to glance covertly at one another with that
hint of criticism, but sat subdued and weakened as
if some element of life had been taken from them.

The lips of the woman in the window moved
noiselessly; her hands were clasped in her lap. She
was praying.

FIRM and somewhat clumsy steps were heard in the
passage, the door was pushed roughly open, banging
back against the black oak chair which was set

DIFFERENCES 183

behind it, and Aunt May entered carrying a large
tray.

" Here's your dinner, Fanny," she said. " We've
done earlier to-night, in spite of interruptions.
She bustled over to the little table in the window,
pushed back the Bible and photograph with the
edge of the tray until she could release one hand, and
then, having driven the tray into a position of safety,
moved Bible and photograph to the centre table.

There was something protestingly vigorous about
her movements, as though she endeavoured to
combat by noise and energy the impoverished
vitality of that emasculate room.

"Now, you three!" she went on. "You had
better come out into the kitchen and take your
things off and wash."

As the Goslings rose, Mrs Pollard turned to them
and stretched out to each in turn her delicate white
hand. " There is only one Comforter." she said.
" Put your trust in Him."

Mrs Gosling gulped, and Blanche and Millie
looked as they used to look when they attended the
Bible-classes held by the vicar's wife.

Blanche gave a shiver of relief as they came out
into the passage. Her mind was suddenly filled by
the astounding thought that everything was not
different. . . .

Supper was laid on the kitchen table — cold
chicken, potatoes and cabbage, stewed plums and
cream, and warm, new milk in a jug; no bread, no
salt, and no pepper.

As the three Goslings washed at the scullery sink

1 84 GOSLINGS

they chattered freely. They felt pleasure at release
from some cold, draining influence; they felt as if
they had come out of church after some long, dull
service, into the air and sunlight.

" I'm sure she's a very 'oly lady," was Mrs
Gosling's final summary.

Blanche shivered again. " Oh! freezing! " was
her enigmatic reply.

Millie said it gave her " the creeps."

They were a party of seven at supper — the meal
was referred to as " supper," although to Mrs
Pollard it had been dignified by the name of
" dinner " — including two young women whom the
Goslings had not hitherto seen; strong, brown-
faced girls, who spoke with a country accent. They
had something still of the manner of servants, but
they were treated as equals both by Allie and
Aunt May.

There was little conversation during the meal,
however, for all of them were too intent on the
business in hand. To the Goslings that meal was,
indeed, a banquet.

When they had all finished, Aunt May rose at
once. " Thank Heaven for daylight," she remarked;
" but we must set our brains to work to invent some
light for the winter. We haven't a candle or a drop
of oil left," she went on, addressing the Goslings,
" and for the past five weeks we have had to bustle
to get everything done before sunset, I can tell you.
Last night we couldn't wash up after supper."

" We know," replied Blanche.

Aunt May nodded. " We all know," she said.

DIFFERENCES 185

" Now, you three girls, get busy! " And Allie and
the two brown-faced young women rose a little
wearily.

" I'm getting an old woman," remarked Aunt
May, " and I'm allowed certain privileges, chief of
them that I don't work after supper. She paused and
looked keenly at the three Goslings. " Which of you
three is in command? " she asked.

" Well, it seems as if my eldest, Blanche, that is,
'as sort o' taken the lead the past few days," began
Mrs Gosling.

"Ah! I thought so," said Aunt May. " Well,
now, Blanche, you'd better come out into the
garden and have a talk with me, and we'll decide
what you had better do. If your mother and sister
would like to go to bed, Allie will show them where
they can sleep.

She moved away in the direction of the garden
and Blanche followed her.

XIV— AUNT MAY

THE sun had set, but as yet the daylight was scarcely
faded. Under the trees the fowls muttered in sub-
dued duckings, and occasionally one of them would
flutter up into the lower branches with a squawk of
effort and then settle herself with a great fluttering
and swelling of feathers, and all the suggestion of a
fussy matron preparing for the night — preparing
only, for these early roosters sat open-eyed and
watchful, as if they knew that there was no chance
of sleep for them until every member of that
careless crowd below had found its appointed place
in the dormitory.

" We put 'em inside in the winter," remarked
Aunt May, as she and Blanche paused, " but they
prefer the trees. We haven't any foxes here, but I've
noticed that the wild things seem to be coming
back."

Blanche nodded. She was thinking how much
there was to learn concerning those matters which
appertained to the production of food.

" They're rather a poor lot," Aunt May con-
tinued, " but they have to forage for themselves,
except for the few bits of vegetable and such things
we can spare them. We've no corn or flour or meal
of any kind for ourselves yet. But a farmer's wife

1 86

AUNT MAY 187

about a mile from here has got a few acres of wheat
and barley coming on, and we shall help her to
harvest and take our share later. We shall be rich
then," she added, with a smile.

" I'm town-bred, you know," said Blanche.
" We've got an awful lot to learn, Millie and me."

" You'll learn quickly enough," was the answer.
" You'll have to."

" I suppose," returned Blanche.

At the end of the orchard through which they
had been passing they came to a knoll, crowned by
a great elm. Round the trunk of the elm a rough
seat had been fixed, and here Aunt May sat down
with a sigh of relief.

" It's a blessed thing to earn your own bread day
by day," she said. " It's a beautiful thing to live
near the earth and feel physically tired at night.
It's delightful to be primitive and agricultural, and
I love it. But I have a civilized vice, Blanche. I
have a store of cigarettes I stole from a shop in
Harrow, and every night when it's fine I come out
here after supper and smoke three; and when it's
wet I smoke 'em in my own bedroom, and — I
dream. But to-night I'm going to talk to you,
because you want help."

She produced a cigarette case and matches from
a side pocket of her jacket, lit a cigarette, inhaled
the smoke with a long gasp of intensest enjoyment,
and then said: " Men weren't fools, my dear; they
had pockets in their coats."

" Yes? " said Blanche. She felt puzzled and a
little awkward. She knew that this woman was a

1 88 GOSLINGS

friend, but the girl's town-bred, objective mind was
critical and embarrassed.

" Do you smoke? " asked Aunt May. " I can
spare you a cigarette, though I know the time must
come when there won't be any more. Still, it's a
long way off yet. Bless the clever man who invented
air-tight tins ! "

" No, I don't smoke, thanks," replied Blanche,
conventionally; and, try as she would, she could not
keep some hint of stiffness out of her voice. Modern
manners take a long time to influence suburban
homes of the Wisteria Grove type.

"Ah! well, you miss a lot!" said Aunt May;
" but you're better without it, especially now, when
tobacco isn't easy to get, and will soon be im-
possible."

" But do you think," asked Blanche, drawing her
eyebrows together, " that this sort of thing is going
on always? "

" I dare say. Don't ask me, my dear; the prob-
lem's beyond me. What we poor women have got to
do is to keep ourselves alive in the meantime. And
that's what we've come out here to talk about.
What about your mother and you two girls? Where
are you going? And what are you proposing to do? "

" / don't know," said Blanche. " I — I've been
trying to think."

" Good! " remarked Aunt May. " I believe you'll
do. I'm doubtful about your sister."

'* We'll have to work on a farm, I suppose."

" It's the only way to live."

"Only where?"

AUNT MAY 189

" That's what I've been trying to worry out,"
said Aunt May. " We do get news here, of a sort.
Our girls work in Mrs Jordan's fields, and meet
girls and women who come from Pinner, and the
Pinner people hear news from Northwood, and the
Northwood people from somewhere else; and so we
get into touch with half a county. But, coming to
your affairs; you see, we here are just the innermost
circle. Most of the women who came from London
missed this place and passed us by, thanks be! . . .
Now, that poor unfortunate Miss Grant, down the
road, had to defend herself with weapons. Fortu-
nately she's strong."

" Is Miss Grant the awful woman with the
broomstick? " asked Blanche.

" She's not really awful, my dear," said Aunt May,
smiling; " she's a very good sort. A little rough in
her manners, perhaps, and quite mad about the
uselessness of the creatures we used to know as men,
but a fine, generous, unselfish woman, if she does
boast of her three murders. Did she tell you that, by
the way? "

Blanche nodded.

" She would, of course; and I believe it's true;
but her theory was to defend her own people. She
said they'd all have died if she hadn't. I'm not sure
about the ethic, but I know dear old Sally Grant
meant well. However, I'm wandering — I often do
when I talk like this. The point was that just this
little circle here, close to London, is very thickly
populated, and there's precious little food ready to
be got any way; but you'll have to pass through the

190 GOSLINGS

country beyond Pinner before you'll find a place
where they'll give you work and keep you. There's
a surplus in the next ring, I gather, too much labour
and too little to grow. You'll have to push out into
the Chilterns, out to Amersham at the nearest. It's
all on the main road, of course, which is bad in a
general way, because that's the road they all took.
But I think if you'll cut across towards Wycombe
you might, perhaps, find a place of some sort, though
whether they'll feed your mother free gratis I can't
say. Women are of all sorts, but this plague hasn't
made 'em more friendly to one another, or perhaps
it is we notice it more, and the worst of the lot are
the farmers' wives and daughters who've got the
land. They get turned out, though, sometimes. We
hear about it. The London women have made raids;
only, you see, the poor dears don't know what to do
with the land when they get it, so they have to keep
the few who do know to teach 'em — when they're
sensible enough — the raiders, I mean. They aren't
always."

" It'll be an adventure," remarked Blanche.

Aunt May threw away the very short end of her
second cigarette and lighted her third. " Adventure
will do you good," she said.

It was nearly dark under the elm. The things of
the night were coming out. Occasionally a cock-
chafer would go humming past them, the bats were
flitting swiftly and silently about the orchard, and
presently an owl swept by in one great stride of
soundless flight.

" How they are all coming back! " murmured

AUNT MAY 191

Aunt May. " All the wild things. I never saw an owl
here before this year."

" I should be frightened if you weren't here,"
said Blanche.

" Nothing to be frightened of, yet."

"Yet?"

" In a few years' time, perhaps. I don't know.
We killed a wild cat who came after the chickens a
few days ago. The cats have gone back already, and
the dogs aren't so respectful as they used to be. The
dogs'll interbreed, I suppose, and evolve a common
form — strike some kind of average in a beast which
will be somewhere near the ancestral type, smaller,
probably, I don't know. It's a wonderful world, and
very interesting. I could almost wish man wouldn't
return for twenty years or so — just to see how much
of his handiwork Nature could undo in the in-
terval. I often think about it out here in the
evenings."

" I wish I knew more about it," said Blanche
timidly. " Are there any books, do you know,
that "

" You won't want books, my dear. Keep your
eyes open and think."

They lapsed into silence again. The third cigarette
was finished, but Aunt May gave no indication of a
desire to get back to the house, and Blanche's mind
was so excited with all the new ideas which were
pouring in upon her that she had forgotten her
tiredness.

" It's awfully interesting," she said at last. " It's
all so different. Mother and Millie hate it, and they'd

192 GOSLINGS

like all the old things back; but I don't think I
would."

" You're all right. You'll do," replied her com-
panion. " You're one of the new sort, though you
might never have found it out if it hadn't been for
the plague. Now, your sister will do one of two
things, in my opinion; either she'll stop in some
place where there's a man — there's one at Wycombe,
by the way — and have children, or she'll turn
religious."

Blanche was about to ask a question, but Aunt
May stopped her. " Never mind about the man, my
dear," she said. " You'll learn quickly enough. It's
like Heaven now, you see — no marrying or giving in
marriage. With one man to every thousand women
or so, what can you expect? It's no good kicking

against it. It's got to be. That's where Fanny "

She broke off suddenly, with a little snort of im-
patience. " I think to-night's an exception," she
went on. " I like talking to you, and one simply
can't talk to Allie yet, so just to-night I'll have one
more." She took out her cigarette case with a touch
of impatience.

It was dark under the elm now, and she had to
hold up her cigarette case close to her face in order
to see the contents. " Two more," she announced.
" It's a festival, and for once I can speak my mind
to some one. An imprudence, perhaps, like this habit
of smoking, but I shall probably never see you again,
and I'm sure you won't tell."

" Oh, no! " interposed Blanche eagerly.

" You're not tired? You don't want to go to bed? "

AUNT MAY 193

" Not a bit. I love being out here."

" I can't see you, but I know you're speaking the
truth," said Aunt May, after a pause. " In the
darkness and silence of the night I will make a
confession. I look weather-worn and fifty, I know,
but I feel absurdly romantic, only there's no man
in this case. I used to write novels, my dear — an
absurd thing for any spinster to do, but they paid,
and I've got the itch for self-expression. That's the
one outlet I miss in this new world of ours. Sally
Grant and I can't agree, and, in any case, she wants
to do all the talking. And sometimes I'm idiot
enough to go on writing little bits even now when I
have become a capable, practical woman with at
least four lives dependent upon me. Well, it shows,
anyhow, that we writing women weren't all
fools. . . ." She hung on that for a moment or two,
and then continued.

" Are you religious? "

" I don't know — I suppose so. We always went to
Church at home," said Blanche. " I thought every
one was, almost. Not quite like Mrs Pollard, of
course."

" Oh, well! " said Aunt May. " There's no harm
and a lot of good in being religious, if you go about
it in the right way. I don't want to change your
opinions, my dear. It's just a question to me of the
right way. And I carft see that Fanny's way is right.
Here we are, and we've got to make the best of it;
and to my mind that means facing life, and not
shutting yourself into one room with a Bible and
spending half your time on your knees. Fanny never

194 GOSLINGS

was good for much. She brought up Alfred — my
nephew, you know — with only one idea, and she
stuffed him so full of holiness that the English
Church couldn't hold him, and he had to work some
of it off by going over to Rome. He thought he'd
have better chances of saintship there. He was a
poor, pale thing, anyway. Of course, that was
anathema to Fanny. She might have forgiven him
for committing a murder, but to become a Roman

Catholic ! Oh, Lord! She's been praying for

him ever since. And, my dear, what difference can
it make? Alfred's apostasy, I mean. Do you think it
matters what particular form of worship or petti-
fogging details of belief you adopt? Why can't the
Churches take each other for granted, and be
generous enough to suppose that all roads lead to
Heaven, which is, according to all accounts, a much
better place than Rome ? But, oh! above all, if you
have a religion, do be practical! Come out and do
your work, instead of sighing and psalm-singing,
and wearying dumb Heaven with fulsome praise and
lamentations of your unworthiness, as if you were
trying to propitiate a rich customer!

" There, my dear, I won't say any more. My last
cigarette's done, and wasted, because I was too
excited to enjoy it. I know I've been disloyal; but
it's my temperament. I could slap Fanny sometimes.
And she shan't have Allie. . . . It's the night that
has affected me. To-morrow I shall be just as prac-
tical as ever, and you'll forget that you've seen this
side of me. Come along. We must go to bed."

" This is the greatest night of my life," thought

AUNT MAY 195

Blanche as they walked back in silence to the
house.

Even when she was in bed, she did not go to sleep
at once. She lay and listened to the heavy breathing
of her mother and Millie, and she wondered.
Everything, indeed, was different, but everybody
was just the same, only, in some curious way,
individualities seemed more pronounced.

Could it be that everybody was more natural,
that there was less restraint?

Blanche was not introspective. She did not test
the theory on herself. She thought of the women
she had met that day, and of her mother and Millie.

She fell asleep, determined to be more like Aunt
May.

02

XV— FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE

ALLIE knocked on the Goslings' door at sunrise the
next morning, and Blanche, who had come to bed
two hours after her mother and sister, was the only
one to respond. She woke with the feeling that she
had something important to do, and that the affair
was in some way pleasant and inspiring.

Millie was not easily roused. She had slept heavily,
and did not approve the suggestion that she should
get up and dress herself.

"All right, B., all right!" she mumbled, and
cuddled down under the bedclothes like a dormouse
into its straw.

"Oh! do get up!" urged Blanche, impatiently,
and at last resorted to physical force.

" What is the matter? " snapped Millie, struggling
to maintain her hold of the blankets. " Why carft
you leave me alone? "

" Because it's time to get up, lazy! " said Blanche,
continuing the struggle.

" Well, I said I'd get up in a minute."

" Well, get up then."

" In a minute."

"No— now!"

"Oh, bother! "said Millie.

Blanche succeeded at last in obtaining possession
of the blankets.

196

FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE 197

" You'll wake mother! " was Millie's last, desper-
ate shaft.

" I'm going to try," replied Blanche.

Millie sat up in the bed and wondered vaguely
where she was. These scenes had often been enacted
at Wisteria Grove, and her mind had gone back to
those delightful days of peace and security. When
full consciousness returned to her, she was half
inclined to cry, and more than half inclined to go to
sleep again.

Mrs Gosling was quite as difficult.

" What's the time? " was her first question.

" I don't know," said Blanche.

" I'm sure it's not seven," murmured Mrs
Gosling.

Millie, still sitting on the bed, wondered whether
Blanche would let her get to the blankets which
were tumbled on the floor a few feet away.

" No, you don't! " exclaimed Blanche, antici-
pating the attempt.

Finally she lost her temper and shook her mother
vigorously.

At that, Mrs Gosling sat up suddenly and stared
at her. " What in 'eaven's name's wrong, gel? " she
asked. Her instinct told her with absolute certainty
that it was still the middle of the night by Wisteria
Grove standards.

" Oh! my goodness! I'm going to have my hands
full with you two ! " broke out Blanche impatiently.
Her imagination pictured for her in that instant
how great the trouble would be. She would never
be able to wake them up. . . .

198 GOSLINGS

They took the road before eight o'clock. Aunt
May was generous in the matter of eggs and fruit,
and she left her many urgent duties to point the way
for the inexperienced explorers.

" Get right out as far as you can," was her parting
word of advice.

They did not see Mrs Pollard again. She was still
in bed when they set out.

DESPITE the promise of another cloudless day, none
of the three travellers set out in high spirits. To all
of them, even to Blanche, it seemed a return to
weariness and pain to start out once more pushing
that abominable truck. That truck represented all
their troubles. It had become associated with all the
discomforts they had endured since they left the
Putney house. It indicated the paucity of their
possessions, and yet it was intolerably heavy to
push. After their brief return to the comfort and
stability of a home and natural food, this adventuring
out into the inhospitable country appeared more
hopeless than ever. If they could have gone without
the truck, they might, at least, have avoided that
feeling of horrible certainty. They might have
cheated themselves into the belief that they would
return. The truck was the brand of their vagabond-
age.

Mrs Gosling did not spare her lamentations
concerning the hopelessness of their endeavour, and

FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE 199
gave it as her opinion that they had been most
heartlessly treated by Aunt May.

" Turning out a woman of my age into the roads,"
she grumbled. " She might 'ave kept us a day or two,
I should 'ave thought. It ain't as if we were beggars.
We could 'ave paid for what we 'ad."

She had, indeed, made the suggestion and been
repulsed. Aunt May had firmly put the offer on one
side without explanation. She understood that ex-
planations would be wasted on Mrs Gosling.

Millie was inclined to agree with her mother.

Blanche, at the handle, did not interrupt the
statement of their grievances. She was occupied with
the problem of the future, trying to think out some
plan in her own confused inconsecutive way.

Their progress was tediously slow. Against the
combined brake of the truck and Mrs Gosling, they
did not average two miles an hour; and even before
they came to Pinner it was becoming obvious to the
two girls that they might as well let their mother
ride on the trolly as allow her to lean her weight
upon it as she walked.

They took the road through Wealdstone to avoid
the hill and found that they were still in the track of
one wing of the foraging army which had preceded
them. That first rush of emigrants had ravaged the
stores and houses as locusts will ravage a stretch of
country. The suburb of regular villas and prim shops
had been completely looted. Doors stood open and
windows were smashed; the spread of ugly houses lay
among the fields like an unwholesome eruption,
awaiting the healing process of Nature. Wealdstone

200 GOSLINGS

also was deserted by humanity. The flood had swept

on towards the open country.

But as they approached Pinner the signs of devas-
tation and desertion began to give way. Here and
there women could be seen working in the fields;
one or two children scuttled away before the ap-
proach of the Goslings and hid in the hedges, children
who had evidently grown furtive and suspicious,
intimidated by the experiences of the past two
months ; and when the outlying houses were reached
— detached suburban villas, once occupied by rela-
tively wealthy middle-class employers — it was evi-
dent that efforts were being made to restore the
wreckage of kitchen gardens.

The Goslings had reached the point at which the
wave had broken after its great initial energy was
spent. Somewhere about this fifteen-mile limit,
varying somewhat according to local conditions, the
real disintegration of the crowd had begun. As the
numerous tokens of the road had shown, a great
number of women and children — possibly one-fifth
of the whole crowd — had died of starvation and dis-
ease before any harbour was reached. From this
fifteen-mile circle outwards, an increasing number
had been stayed in their flight by the opportunities
of obtaining food. Work was urgently demanded for
the future, but the determining factor was the pre-
sent supply of food, and the constriction of imme-
diate supply had decided the question of how great
a proportion of the women and children should
remain. Here, about Pinner, was more land than
the limited number of workers could till, but little

FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE 201

of it was arable, and this year there would be almost
no harvest of grain.

Vaguely, Blanche realized this. She remembered
Aunt May's advice to keep her eyes open, and looking
about her as she walked she found little promise of
security in the grass fields and the rare signs of human
activity.

Mrs Gosling, eager to find some home at any
price, expressed her usual optimistic opinion with
regard to the value of money. She saw signs of life
again, at last, conditions familiar to her. She thought
that they were returning once more to some kind of
recognizable civilization, and began, with some
renewal of her old vigour, to advise that they should
find an hotel or inn and take " a good look round "
before going any further.

Millie, heartened by her mother's belief, was
of much the same opinion, and Blanche was sum-
moned from the pole to listen to the proposition.

She shook her head stubbornly.

" I'm not going to argue it out all over again," she
said. " You can just look round and see for your-
selves that there's no food to be got here. We must
get further out."

Mrs Gosling refused to be convinced, and advanced
her superior knowledge of the world to support her
judgment of the case.

" Oh! very well," said Blanche, at last. " Come on
to the inn and see for yourselves."

The inn, however, was deserted. All its available
supply of food, solid and liquid, had long been ex-
hausted, and the gardenless house had offered no

toz GOSLINGS

particular attractions as a residence. Houses were
cheap in that place, the whole population of Pinner,
including children, did not exceed three hundred
persons.

They found a woman working in a garden near by,
and she, with perhaps unnecessary harshness, warned
them that they could not stay in the village. " There's
not enough food for us as it is," she said, and made
some reference to " silly Londoners."

That was an expression with which the Goslings
were to become very familiar in the near future.

The appeal for pity fell on deaf ears. Mrs Gosling
learned that she was only one of many thousands
who had made the same appeal.

The sun was high in the sky as they trudged out
of Pinner on the road towards Northwood. It was
then Blanche suggested that her mother should
always ride on the trolly, except when they were
facing a hill; and after a few weak protestations
the suggestion was accepted. The trolly was light-
ened of various useless articles of furniture — a
grudging sacrifice on the part of Mrs Gosling — and
the party pushed on at a slightly improved pace.

After her disappointment in Pinner, Mrs Gos-
ling's interest in life began rapidly to decline. Seated
in her truck, she fell into long fits of brooding on
the past. She was too old and too stereotyped to
change, the future held no hope for her, and as the
meaning and purpose of her existence faded, the
life forces within her surely and ever more rapidly
ebbed. Reality to her became the discomfort of the
sun's heat, the dust of the road, the creak and scream

FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE 203

of the trolly wheels. She was incapable of relating
herself to the great scheme of life, her consciousness
was limited, as it had always been limited, to her
immediate surroundings. She saw herself as a woman
outrageously used by fate, but to fate she gave no
name; the very idea, indeed, was too abstract to be
appreciated by her. Blanche, Millie and that horri-
ble truck were all that was left of her world, and in
spirit she still moved in the beloved, familiar places
of her suburban home.

As the Goslings trudged out into the Chilterns they
came into new conditions. Soon they found over-
crowding in place of desolation. The harvest was
ripening and in a month's time the demand for
labour would almost equal the supply, for the
labour offered was quite absurdly unskilled and ten
women would be required to perform the work of
one man equipped with machines. But at the end
of July the surplus of women, almost exclusively
Londoners, had no employment and little food, and
many were living on grass, nettles, leaves, any green
stuff they could boil and eat, together with such
scraps of meat and vegetables as they could steal or
beg. Their experiments with wild green stuffs often
resulted in some form of poisoning, and dysen-
tery and starvation were rapidly increasing the mor-
tality among them. Nevertheless, in Rickmansworth
houses were still at a premium, and many of those
who camped perforce in fields or by the roadside

204 GOSLINGS

were too enfeebled by town-life to stand the exposure
of the occasional cold, wet nights. The majority of
the women in this ring were those who had been too
weak to struggle on. They represented the class least
fitted to adapt themselves to the new conditions.
The stronger and more capable had persisted, and
left these congested areas behind them; and it was
evident that in a very few months a balance between
labour and supply would be struck by the relentless
extermination of the weakest by starvation and dis-
ease.

Blanche, if she was unable to grasp the problem
which was being so inevitably solved by the forces of
natural law, was at least able to recognize clearly
enough that she and her two dependents must not
linger in the district to which they had now come.
Aunt May had warned her that she must push out as
far as Amersham at the nearest, but Millie was too
tired and footsore to go much further than Rick-
mansworth that night, and after a fruitless search
for shelter they camped out half a mile from the
town in the direction of Chorley Wood.

They made some kind of a shield from the weather
by emptying and tilting the trolly, and they hid
their supply of food behind them at the lowest point
of this species of lean-to roof. The two girls had
realized that that supply would soon be raided if
the f aft of its existence were to become known. They
had been the object of much scrutiny as they passed,
and their appearance of well-being had prompted
endless demands for food, from that pitiful crowd of
emaciated women and children. It had been a de-

FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE 205

mand quickly put on one side by lying. Their appli-
cants found it only too easy to believe that the
Goslings had no food hidden in the truck.

" I hated to refuse some of 'em," Blanche said as
they carefully hid what food was left to them, before
turning in for the night, " but what good would our
little bit have done among all that lot? It would have
been gone in half a jiff."

" Well, of course," agreed Millie.

Mrs Gosling had taken little notice of the starving
crowd. " We've got nothin' to give you," was her
one form of reply. She might have been dealing
with hawkers in Wisteria Grove.

She was curiously apathetic all that afternoon and
evening, and raised only the feeblest protestation
against the necessity for sleeping in 'the open air.
But she was very restless during the night, her limbs
twitched and she moved continually, muttering and
sometimes crying out. And as the three women were
all huddled together, partly to make the most of their
somewhat insufficient lean-to, and partly because
they were afraid of the terrors of the open air, both
Blanche and Millie were constantly aroused by their
mother's movements. Once they heard her calling
urgently for " George."

" Mother's odd, isn't she? " whispered Blanche
after one such disturbance. " Do you think she's
going to be ill? "

" Shouldn't wonder," muttered Millie. " Who
wouldn't be? "

In the morning Blanche was very careful with their
food. For breakfast they ate only part of a tin of

02

206 GOSLINGS

condensed beef between them — Mrs Gosling indeed
ate hardly anything. The eggs which they had
brought from Sudbury they reserved, chiefly be-
cause they had neither water nor fire.

They drank from a stream, later, and at midday
Blanche and Millie each ate one of the eggs raw. Mrs
Gosling refused all food on this occasion. She had
been very quiet all the morning, and had made little
complaint when she had been forced to walk the
many hills which they were now encountering.

Blanche was uneasy and tried to induce her
mother to talk. " Do you feel bad, mother? " she
asked continually.

" I wish I could get 'ome," was all the reply she
received.

" She'll be all right when "we can get settled some-
where," grumbled Millie. " If such a time ever

comes."

THEY came to Amersham in the afternoon. The
signs of misery and starvation were here less marked.
They were approaching the outer edge of this ring
of compression, having passed through the node at
Rickmansworth. The faint relief of pressure was evi-
denced to some extent in the attitude of the people
they addressed. It is true that no immediate hope of
food and employment were held out to them, but
on the one hand Blanche's inquiries were answered
with less acerbity and on the other they were less
besieged by importunate demands for charity.

FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE 207

Blanche gave an egg to one precocious girl of thir-
teen or so, who insisted on helping them to push the
truck uphill, and she and Millie watched the deft
way in which the child broke the shell at one end
and sucked out the contents. Their own methods
had been both unclean and wasteful.

They turned off the Aylesbury Road, towards
High Wycombe late in the afternoon and about a
mile from Amersham came to a farm where they
made their last inquiry that day.

Blanche saw signs of life in the outbuildings and
went to investigate, leaving Millie and her mother
to guard the truck. She found three women and a
girl of fourteen or so milking. For some minutes she
stood watching them, the women, after one glance
at her, proceeding with their w*ork without paying
her any further attention. But, at last, the eldest
of the three rose from her stool with a sigh of relief,
picked up her wooden bucket of milk, gave the cow
a resounding slap on the side, and then, turning to
Blanche, said, " Well, my gal, what's for you? "

" Will you change two pints of milk for a small
tin of tongue? " asked Blanche. It was the first time
she had offered any of their precious tinned meats in
exchange for other food, but she wanted milk for
her mother, who had hardly eaten anything that day.

The two other women and the girl looked round
and regarded Blanche with the first signs of interest
they had shown.

" Tongue, eh? " said the older woman. " Where
from did you get tongue, my gal? "

" London," replied Blanche tersely.

208 GOSLINGS

" When did you leave there? " asked the woman,
and then Blanche was engaged in a series of searching
questions respecting the country she had passed
through.

" You can have the milk if you've anything to
put it in," said the woman at last, and Blanche went
to fetch the tongue and the two bottles that they
had had from Aunt May.

The bottles had to be scalded, a precaution that
had not occurred to Blanche, and one of the other
women was sent to carry out the operation.

" Well, your tale don't tell us much," said the
woman of the farm, " but we always pass the news
here, now. Where are you going to sleep to-night? "

Blanche shrugged her shoulders.

" You can sleep here in the outhouses, if you've a
mind to," said the woman, " but I warn you we get
a crowd. Silly Londoners like yourself for the most
part, but we find a use for 'em somehow, though I'd
give the lot for three labourers."

She paused and twisted her mouth on one side
reflectively. " Ah! well," she went on with a sigh,
" no use grieving over them that's gone; all I was
goin' to say was, if you sleep here you'd better keep
an eye on what food you've got with you. My lot'll
have it before you can say knife, if they get half a
chance."

" It isn't us girls, me and my sister," explained
Blanche. " It's my mother. She's bad, I'm afraid.
If she could sleep in your kitchen . . . ? She wouldn't
steal anything."

After a short hesitation the woman consented.

FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE 209

Yet neither the glory of being once more within
the four walls of a house, nor the refreshment of the
milk which she drank readily enough, seemed appre-
ciably to rouse Mrs Gosling's spirits.

The woman of the farm, a kindly enough creature,
plied the old lady with questions, but received few
and confused answers in reply. Mrs Gosling seemed
dazed and stupid. " A touch of the sun," the farmer's
widow thought.

" The sun's been cruel strong the past week," she
said, " but she'll be all right in a day or two, get her
to shelter."

" Ah! that's the trouble," said Blanche.

That night the farmer's widow said no more on
that subject. She allowed the three Goslings to sleep
in an upstair room, in which there was one small
bed for the mother, and the two girls slept on the
floor. Exchanging confidence for confidence, they
brought their truck into the kitchen; and then
the farmer's widow proceeded to lock up for
the night, an elaborate business, which included
the fastening of all ground-floor windows and
shutters.

" It's a thievin' crowd we've got about here," she
explained, " and you can't blame them or anyone
when there ain't enough food to go round. But we
have to be careful for 'em. Let 'em go their own way
and they'd eat up everything in a week and then
starve. It looks like your being hard on 'em, but it's
for their own good. There's some, of course," she
went on, " as you have got to get shut of. Only
yesterday I had to send one of 'em packing. A Jew

P

210 GOSLINGS

woman she was, called 'erself Mrs Isaacson or some-
thing. She was a caution."

Blanche wondered idly if this were the same Mrs
Isaacson who had stayed too long with Aunt May.

The woman of the farm roused the Goslings at
sunrise, and she, like Aunt May, had a brisk, prac-
tical, morning manner.

She gave the travellers no more food, but when
they were nearly ready to take the road again she
gave them one valuable piece of information.

" If I was you," she said, " I'd make through
Wycombe straight along the road here, and go
up over the hill to Marlow. Mind you, they won't
let every one stop there. But you look two healthy
gals enough and it's getting on towards harvest
when there'll be work as you can do."

" Marlow? " repeated Blanche, fixing the name
in her memory.

The farmer's widow nodded. " There's a man
there," she said. " A queer sort, by all accounts.
Not like Sam Evans, the butcher at Wycombe, he
ain't. Seems as this Marlow chap don't have no truck
with gals, except setting 'em to work. However,
time'll show. He may change his mind yet."

They had some difficulty with Mrs Gosling. She
refused feebly to leave the house. " I ain't fit to go
out," she complained, and when they insisted she
asked if they were going home.

" Best say ' yes,' " whispered the woman of the
farm. " The sun's got to her head a bit. She'll be
all right when you get her to Marlow."

Blanche accepted the suggestion, and by this sub-

FROM SUDBURY TO WYCOMBE 2 1 1

terfuge Mrs Gosling was persuaded into the truck.
The girl found the ruins of an umbrella, which they
rigged up to protect her from the sun.

Blanche and Millie were quite convinced now that
their mother was suffering from a slight attack of
sunstroke.

Both the girls were still footsore, and one of
Millie's boots had worn into a hole, but they had a
definite objective at last, and only some ten or twelve
miles to travel before reaching it.

" We shall be there by midday," said Blanche,
hopefully.

Unconsciously, every one was using a new measure
of time.

P2

XVI— THE YOUNG BUTCHER OF HIGH
WYCOMBE

NEAR Wycombe a woman rose from under the
hedge as the Goslings approached, and came out
into the middle of the road. She was a stout, florid
woman, whose age might have been anything
between forty and fifty. Her gait and the droop of
her shoulders, rather than the flaccidity of her
rather loose skin, gave her the appearance of being
past middle age.

" Goot morning," she said as the Goslings came
up. " If it iss no inconvenience I would like to come
with you." She spoke with a foreign accent, thicken-
ing her final consonants and giving a different value
to some of her vowels.

" Where to? " asked Blanche curtly.

" Ah! that! what does it matter? " returned the
woman. " I have been living with a farmer's wife
further back along the road there. But she was not
company for me. She was common. Now I see that
you and your mother are not common. And I do
not care to live with farmers' wives. But where we
go? Does it matter? We all go to find work in the
fields — aristocrat as much as peasant. But iss it not
better that we who are not peasants should go
together? "

212

THE YOUNG BUTCHER 2 1 3

Millie giggled surreptitiously, and Mrs Gosling
appeared conscious of the £a6l that some one was
addressing them.

" We're goin' 'ome," she remarked, and Millie
gently prodded her in the back.

*' Goin' 'ome," repeated Mrs Gosling firmly.

" Ach! You are lucky. There are few that have
homes now," replied the strange woman. " I had a
home, once, how long ago. Now, during two months,
I have no home." She was evidently on the verge of
tears.

" Mother's got a touch of the sun," Blanche said
in a low voice, " and we have to pretend we're going
home. You needn't tell her we're not."

" Have no fear," replied the stranger. " I am all
that is most discreet, yes."

Blanche hardened her heart. This woman took too
much for granted. " I don't see it's any use your
coming with us," she said.

" Ach! we others, we should cling together," said
the stranger, with a large gesture.

" We're nobody," replied Blanche, curtly.

" It iss well to say that. I know. There iss good
reason. I, too, must tell the common people that I
am a nobody, I call myself, even, Mrs Isaacson.
But between us there iss no need to say what iss not
true. I can see what you are. Although I am not
English, I have lived many years already in Eng-
land, and I can see. It iss well that we cling together?
Yes? "

" Oh! " burst out Blanche. "You're Mrs Isaac-
son, are you? I've heard of you."

214 GOSLINGS

For one moment Mrs Isaacson's fine eyes seemed
to look inwards in an instantaneous review of her
past. " Ach! so! Then we are friends already," she
said cautiously.

" I heard of you from Aunt May," said Blanche,
and the faint air of respect with which she pro-
nounced the name did not escape the notice of the
alert Jewess.

" Ach! the so dear and so clever Auntie May," she
said. " But she iss too kind, and work so hard while
her sister do always nothing. See, I will help you to
draw your poor mother who has a touch of the sun.
You and I at the handle and your beautiful sister to
push, while we talk a little of the clever Auntie May.
Yes? "

Blanche had been forewarned. She could only put
one construction on the little she had heard of Mrs
Isaacson. But the Jewess's manner no less than her
conversation was subtly flattering. Moreover, she
had made no appeal for help ; finally there was a cer-
tain urgency about her, a force of will which Blanche
found it difficult to resist. And as the girl still hesi-
tated Mrs Isaacson bravely seized her side of the
trolly handle and the procession moved on.

The Goslings found a use for her when they came
to the drop of Amersham Hill, going down into High
Wycombe. Blanche proposed that Mrs Gosling
should walk down, but the old lady did not seem to
understand her. She looked perplexed and kept
saying, " I don't remember this road. Are you
sure we're goin' right, Blanche? "

" Ah! she must not walk in this heat," put in Mrs

THE YOUNG BUTCHER 215

Isaacson. " We three can manage very well." And,
indeed, although she manifestly suffered greatly
from the exertion, the Jewess was of very great
assistance in retarding the speed of the trolly as
they made the perilous descent.

After that there could be no question of calmly
telling her to go her own way.

By the time they had crossed the almost deserted
town — at that hour nearly all the women were either
in their houses or working in gardens and fields —
and had found their way to the Marlow road, Mrs
Isaacson had quite become one of the party, and
by no means the least energetic.

" We'll have something to eat and some milk,
when we get through the town," said Blanche as
they faced the long hill up to Handy Cross.

" Presently, presently," replied the heaving Mrs
Isaacson, as though food were of little importance
to her, but accepting the admission that she had
earned the right to share equally with the others.

Their first burst of energy after they had faced the
ascent brought them to the gates of Wycombe
Abbey, and there they decided to rest and lunch,
blissfully ignorant of the long climb which lay
before them.

" It will be nice and quiet here in the shade,"
suggested Mrs Isaacson.

THE old conventions would not have suffered
them to sit and eat thus under the walls, at the

216 GOSLINGS

very gates of Wycombe Abbey. Their clothes and
their boots were wearing badly, and Mrs Isaacson,
at least, was not too clean. It was noticeable, how-
ever, that, despite the dryness of the weather, little
dust clung to them. The surface of the roads had
not been pounded and crushed into powder during
the past six weeks by the constant passage of wheeled
traffic, and even in the tracks frequented by farm
carts the roads were stained with green. Indeed,
everything was greener than in the old days,
everything was more vigorous. Whether because the
year had been favourable, or because it was relieved
from the burden of choking dust which it had had to
endure in other years from May onwards, the vege-
tation in hedges and by the wayside appeared to
grow more strongly and with a greater self-assertion.
And by contrast with this vigour and cleanness of
plant life, the four women in their tumbled clothes
and untidy hats, feeble and unsightly remnants of
forgotten fashion, were as much out of place as if
they had been set down in ancient Greece. The
dowdy foolishness of their apparel marked them out
from every other living thing about them, they were
intruders, despoilers of beauty.

Some dim consciousness of this came to Blanche.

They had spoken little as they ate — Mrs Gosling
would touch nothing but milk, and Mrs Isaacson
strove desperately and with some success to control
the greed that showed in the concentrated eagerness
of her eyes and the grasping crook of her fingers —
and when they had finished, lingering in the relief
of the shade, they were still silent. It seemed as if the

THE YOUNG BUTCHER 217

first word spoken must necessarily hasten the con-
tinuation of their journey.

" Oh! bother this old hat," said Blanche at last.
" Pm going to take mine off," and she drew out the
solitary pin which remained to her and cast the hat
into the ditch.

' That won't do it any good," remarked Millie
but she, too, took off her hat with a sigh of relief.

" I'm going to chuck hats," said Blanche. "What's
the good of 'em? "

Mrs Isaacson looked doubtful. " They are a pro-
tection from the sun," she said.

" Allie never wore a hat, and she didn't come to
any harm," returned Blanche.

" No? " said Mrs Isaacson, and looked thoughtful.

Millie was running her fingers through the masses
of her red-brown hair, loosening it and lifting it from
her head.

" It is a relief," she remarked. " My head gets so
hot."

" Ah! " said Mrs Isaacson, " and what beautiful
hair! It does not seem right to hide it. I haf a comb
in my bag. It is almost all I haf left. Let me now comb
your beautiful hair for you."

" Oh! don't you bother," said Millie sheepishly,
but she allowed herself to be persuaded. " Don't
lose the hair-pins," she warned her newly-found
lady's maid.

" It seems so funny out here in the open road,"
giggled Millie.

Mrs Isaacson's praise was f ulsome.

Blanche watched without comment. Mrs Gosling

218 GOSLINGS

was plunged in meditation. She was involved in an
immense problem relating to the housekeeping at
Wisteria Grove. She was debating whether the lace-
curtains at the front windows could be washed at
home when they went back.

Suddenly the attention of the three younger
women was caught by unnatural sounds that came
from the further side of the wall against which they
were leaning — sounds of voices, laughing and sing-
ing, the crunch of wheels and the stamping of
horses.

The two girls jumped to their feet. Mrs
Isaacson rose more deliberately, with a grunt
of expostulation. Mrs Gosling was in a world
far removed and continued to debate her
problem.

Millie's hands were fumbling at her hair, and
Blanche was first at the gate.

"Oh! my!" she exclaimed. "Why, whatever
»

" Goody! " squealed Millie, still struggling with
her loose mane.

3

THE centre and object of the curious crowd which
moved slowly down the drive was a landau and pair.
The horses were decorated as if for a May-day fete,
grotesquely, foolishly decorated with roses, syringa
and buttercups made into shapeless bunches and
tied to the harness. Three or four women walked
at the horses' heads, leading them with absurdly
beflowered ropes.

THE YOUNG BUTCHER 219

Round the landau a dozen girls and young women
were dancing, chattering, singing, laughing; con-
stantly turning to the occupant of the carriage, for
whose benefit the whole performance was being
conducted. Some of them had their necks and breasts
bare, and all appeared to be frankly shameless. They
twisted and danced with clumsy eagerness, threw
themselves about, screamed and shrieked, unaware
of any observer but the one whose notice they were
seeking to attract. They were graceless, civilized
savages; Bacchantes who had never known the
beauty of unconscious abandonment. There was the
ugliness of conscious purpose in their every attitude,
and no trace of the freedom that comes from careless
rapture.

In the carriage a man and a woman were sitting
side by side. The man was young, with strong claims
to physical beauty — tall, broad-shouldered, swarthy,
with boldly modelled features and heavily lidded
eyes. But his skin was coarse; the bulk of his body was
too gross for clean, muscular strength; his curly,
well-oiled hair was thinning at the temples; his loose
mouth leered and gaped. He was dressed in a suit of
broadly-patterned tweed, his great red fingers were
covered with rings, he wore a heavy gold bangle on
each thick, round wrist, and a sweet, frail rose was
thrust into his black and greasy hair.

The woman beside him was the typical courtesan
of the ages, low-browed and full-lipped. Her eyes
were eloquent with the subtleties of love, with
invitation, retreat, fear and desire. Had she been
dressed becomingly she would have been beautiful;

220 GOSLINGS

but she was English and modern, and her great
meaningless hat and senseless garments were of the
fashion that had been in vogue just before the
plague. This reigning sultana and her lover were
more incongruous in that setting than the two dis-
hevelled, travel-worn girls, who retreated timidly
to let the landau pass out between the great iron
gates.

The Bacchantes eyed the Goslings with obvious
disfavour, but the beauty in the landau seemed un-
aware of their presence until her lord's attention was
attracted by the sight of Millie's hair — it was all
down again, rippling and spreading to her waist.

The young butcher had been lolling back in a
corner of his carriage, magnificently indolent, sure
of worship; but his satiety was pierced by the sight
of that flaming mane. He sat up and looked at
Millie with the experienced eyes which had served
him so well in his judgment of cattle.

" 'Ere, 'alf a jiff," he commanded the nymphs
at his horses' bridles, and the carriage was
stopped.

Millie, covered with shame, shrank back, and
cowered behind Blanche, who threw up her chin and
met the butcher's eyes with all the contempt of
which she was capable — little enough, perhaps, for
she, too, was weak with unreasoning terror. Behind
their backs the Jewess grimaced her scorn of
them.

" You needn't be afraid of me — I ain't goin' to
'urt yer " began the butcher, but his lady inter-
rupted him.

THE YOUNG BUTCHER 221

Her fine eyes grew bright with anger. " If you
stop here, I shall get out," she said, and her inflexion
was not that of the people.

The butcher visibly hesitated. It may be that this
chain had held him too long and was beginning to
gall him, but he looked at her and wavered.

" No 'arm in stoppin'," he muttered. " Pass the
news an' that."

" Are you going on? " demanded the beauty
fiercely.

" All right, all right," he returned sullenly. " You
needen' get so blasted 'uffy about it, old gal. Oh,
gow on, you! " he added to the nymphs. " Wot the
'ell are yer starin' at? "

As the landau moved on, he looked back once at
Millie.

4

" WHAT a brute," said Blanche when the procession
had passed on down the hill towards Wycombe.

" How he stared at my hair," said Millie, with a
giggle. " I did try to get it up, but it's that stubborn
with the heat or something."

" Lucky for us he had that creature with him,"
commented Blanche.

Millie assented without fervour. She was bold
enough now the danger had passed.

Mrs Isaacson looked from one to the other and
attempted no criticism of the adventure.

" You must let me do up your beautiful hair," she
said to the simpering Millie.

Millie was grateful. " It is kind of you, Mrs

222 GOSLINGS

Isaacson, I'm sure," she said. " My hair is a trouble.
I sometimes think I'll cut it all off and be done with
it ..."

She appeared excited and chatted incessantly
while the hair-dressing continued, and Blanche re-
stored the remains of their meal to the trolly.

With some difficulty they succeeded in getting
Mrs Gosling back into her carriage. She had taken
no notice of the procession, but as they were starting
again she awoke from her abstraction to ask: " When
d'you expect we'll be 'ome, Blanche? I've been
thinkin' about them curtains in the drawin'-room

5>

" We'll be home in an hour or two, now," Blanche
said, reassuringly. She did not know what a struggle
awaited them before they should top the hill at
Handy Cross.

Mrs Isaacson had forsaken her place at the pole.
" I shall be able to push more strongly behind," she
had said, but despite the theoretical gain in me-
chanical advantage obtained by the new arrange-
ment, the hill seemed never-ending. They had to rest
continually, and always they looked with increasing
irritation at the quiet figure in the trolly, chief
cause of their distress.

" I believe she could walk all right," Millie broke
out at last.

" If it was for a little way, it would help," com-
mented Mrs Isaacson.

But when Blanche put the proposition to her
mother, Mrs Gosling seemed unable to comprehend
it, and pity influenced them to renew the struggle.

THE YOUNG BUTCHER 223

So they toiled on with growing impatience until
they reached level ground again; and presently,
looking down over the long slope of the valley, saw,
two miles and a half away, the spire of Marlow
Church.

They rested under a hedge for a time, and when
they started again Millie followed her sister's
example and discarded her hat. Blanche, with a
certain courage of opinion, had left hers under the
walls of Wycombe Abbey, but Millie's hat found a
place in the trolly.

The ease of the long descent permitted a renewal
of conversation, and Mrs Isaacson and Millie talked
in undertones as they made their way down towards
Marlow. Blanche took little notice of them; she was
struggling perplexedly with the problems of life.
Mrs Gosling's presence was negligible.

" That was a very handsome fellow in the car-
riage," remarked Mrs Isaacson suddenly, " I think
you do well not to go near that place again." Her
fine eyes fixedly regarded the broad, rusty back of
Mrs Gosling and the broken ribs of her umbrella.

Millie simpered. " Oh! I should be safe enough.
His wife'd see to that."

" She was not his wife," returned Mrs Isaacson.
" Men would not marry now that they are so
few."

" Well! there's a thing to say! " exclaimed Millie
on a note of expostulation, interested nevertheless.

" It iss true," continued Mrs Isaacson. " I haf
heard of this handsome young fellow. He iss a
butcher, and he goes every day to kill the sheep and

224 GOSLINGS

cows, because the women do not like that work. And
he iss very strong, and clever also. He teach a few of
the women how to cut up the sheep and the cows.
And he iss much admired, it iss of course, by all the
young women; but he does not marry because he is
one man among so many women, and it would not
be right that he should love only one, for so there
would be so few children and the world would die.
Yes! But he has for a time one who iss favourite,
for another time another favourite. And that iss why
I warn you not to return. Because I see that he
admire your so beautiful hair. And I see that if you
had not been so modest and so good, and hide behind
your sister, he would have come down from his car-
riage and put you up there beside him. And he would
have said to that bold ugly woman. * Go, I tire of
you, I will haf beside me this one who iss young and
beautiful and has hair of gold.' It iss not safe for you,
there."

" Oh! I say," commented Millie.

" It iss true," nodded Mrs Isaacson, with in-
tensest conviction.

" Oh! well, thank goodness, I'm not one of that
sort," said Millie, warm in the knowledge of her
virtue.

" Truly not," assented Mrs Isaacson. " You
must not be displeased that I warn you. It iss not
your goodness that I doubt. It iss that this man iss
so powerful. He iss able to do what he wishes. He iss
a king."

" Goody! " was the mark of surprise with which
Millie punctuated this remarkable piece of infor-

THE YOUNG BUTCHER 225

mation, and for several yards they trudged on in
silence.

But Millie soon revived this fascinating subject by
saying thoughtfully, " Well, you don't catch me
over there again."

" Truly not. It iss not wise," agreed Mrs Isaac-
son, and proceeded to enlarge upon Millie's dan-
gerous beauty.

It was a topic entirely new to Millie. She sim-
pered and giggled, disclaimed her attractions, pro-
tested that Mrs Isaacson was " getting at " her, and
became so absorbed in the fascination of her dis-
avowal that she forgot her weariness, her tender
feet — naked to the road in two places — and all her
discouragements. She walked with a more conscious
air, straightening her back and lifting her head.
The blood moved more freely in her veins, and she
presently became so vivacious in her replies that
Blanche was aroused to a sense of something un-
familiar. She checked the trolly and looked back at
her sister, past the quiet brooding figure of Mrs
Gosling.

" What is it, Mill? " she asked.

" Oh! nothing! " replied Millie. " We were just
talking."

" Seem to be enjoying yourselves," said Blanche.

" We were saying that we shall soon now arrive
at some place where we can rest. Yes? " put in Mrs
Isaacson, and thus established a ground of confidence
between herself and Millie.

" P'raps. I dunno! " returned Blanche. She sighed
and looked round her.

226 GOSLINGS

In the fields between them and Marlow they
could see here and there little figures stooping and
straightening.

" Ooh! " exclaimed Millie, suddenly.

"What? "asked Blanche.

" There's another man," said Millie, pointing.
"We'd better scoot!"

But they made no attempt to put such an impos-
sible plan into action. The man had evidently seen
them. He was coming towards them across one of
the fields, shouting to attract their attention. " Hi!
wait a minute! " they thought he was saying.

" Mill! " exclaimed Blanche, with extraordinary
emphasis.

"What?" asked Millie, nervously. She was
flushed and trembling.

" Do you see who it is? "

" It isn't the one out of the carriage ..." hesi-
tated Millie.

" No! Silly. It's that young fellow who used to live
with us, our Mr Fastidious. What was his name?
Thrale! You remember."

" Goody! " said Millie. She was conscious of a
quite inexplicable feeling of disappointment.

" He iss a friend? Yes? " asked Mrs Isaacson.

BOOK III

WOMANKIND IN THE MAKING

XVII— LONDON TO MARLOW

THE history of mankind is the history of human law.
The larger ordinances of the universe are commonly
referred to some superior lawgiver, under such
names as God and physico-chemical action; names
which appear mutually subversive only to the bigot,
whether theologian or biologist. These larger ordin-
ances sometimes appear inflexible, as in the domain
of physics and chemistry, sometimes empirical as
in the development of species, but we may believe
that if they change at all, the period of change is so
great as to be outside any possibility of observation
by a few thousand generations of mankind.

Human law, on the other hand, is tentative, with-
out sound precedent and in its very nature mutable.
In our miserably limited record of history, that
paltry ten thousand years which is but a single tick
of the cosmic watch, we have been unable to formu-
late any overruling law to which other laws are
subject. Climate, race and condition impose certain
limitations, and within that enceinte civilizations
have developed a system of rules, increasing always
in complexity, and have then failed to maintain
their place in the competitive struggle. It has been
rashly suggested that the overriding law of laws

229

230 GOSLINGS

is that rigidity is fatal to the nation. An analogy has
been found in the growth of the child. Here and
there some bold spirit has ventured the daring
hypothesis that if a young child be confined within
a perfectly fitting iron shell he will not grow. Such
speculations, however, do not appeal to mankind
as a whole. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that
nothing appals us so much as the idea that man is
capable of growth. Is it not inconceivable that any
race of men could be wiser, more perfect than our-
selves?

Nevertheless, out of all vague speculation one
deliciously certain axiom presents itself, namely
that mankind cannot live without law of some kind.
The most primitive savage has his ordinances. The
least primary concussion of individuals develops a
rule of practice, whether it takes such diverse forms
as "hit first," or "present the other cheek"; al-
though the latter rule has not yet been developed be-
yond the stage of theory.

In the unprecedented year of the new plague,
the old rules were thrown into the melting pot, but
within three months humanity was evolving pre-
cedents for a new statute book. The concussions of
these three months were fierce and destructive.
Women, in the face of death, killed and stole in
the old primitive ways, unhampered now by the
necessity to kill and steal according to the tedious
rules of twentieth-century civilization, rules that
women had never been foolish enough to reverence
in the letter. All those complex and incompre-
hensible laws had been made by men for men, and

LONDON TO MARLOW 231

after the plague there was none to administer them,
for no women and few men had ever had the least
idea what the law was. Even the lawgivers them-
selves had had to wait for the pronouncement of
some prejudiced or unprejudiced judge. Women
had long known what our Bumbles can only learn
by bitter experience, inspired to vision in some
moment of fury or desolation.

But within three months of the first great exodus
of women from the town, one dominant law was
being brought to birth. It was not written on tables
of stone, nor incorporated in any swollen, dyspeptic
book of statutes; it was not formulated by logic,
nor was it the outcome of serious thought by any
individual or by a solemn committee. The law rose
into recognition because it was a necessity for the
life of the majority, and although that majority
was not compact, had no common deliberate purpose,
and had never formulated their demand in precise
language, the new law came into being before harvest
and was accepted by all but a small resentful minor-
ity of aristocrats and landowners, as a supreme
ordinance, indisputably just.

This law was that every woman had a right to her
share in the bounty of Nature, and the corollary
was that she earned her right by labour.

In those days the justice of the principle was
perfectly obvious; so obvious, indeed, that the law
came to birth without the obstetric skill of any
parliament whatever.

232 GOSLINGS

IT is now impossible to say why such different types
of male humanity as Jasper Thrale, George Gosling
or the Bacchus of Wycombe Abbey escaped the
plague. The bacillus (surely a strangely individual
type, it must have been) was never isolated, nor the
pathology of the disease investigated. The germ was
some new unprecedented growth which ran through
a fierce cycle of development within a few months,
changed its nature as it swarmed into every corner
of the earth, and finally expired more quickly than
it had come into being.

If the male survivors in Europe and the East had
been of one type, some theory might be formulated
to account for their immunity; but so far as science
can pronounce an opinion, the living male residue
can only be explained by the doftrine of chances.
A few escaped, by accident. In the British Isles
there may have been 1,500 men who thus survived.
In the whole of Europe, besides, there were less than
a thousand. It seems probable that even before
Scotland was attacked the climax had been reached;
by the time the plague reached England the first
faint evidences of a decline in virulence may be
marked. . . .

From the first, Jasper Thrale ventured his life
without an afterthought. He was fearless by nature.
He did not lack those powers of imagination which
are commonly supposed to add so greatly to the
terror of death, he simply lacked the feeling of fear.

LONDON TO MARLOW 233

In all his life he had never experienced that sickness
of apprehension which dissolves our fibre into a
quivering jelly — as though the spirit had already
withdrawn from the trembling inertia of the flesh.
Perhaps Thrale's spirit was too dominant for such
retreat, was more completely master of its material
than is the spirit of the common man. For the spirit
cannot know bodily fear, it is the apprehensive flesh
that wilts and curdles at the approach of danger.
And it is worthy of notice that in the old days, up
to the early twentieth century, these rare cases of
fearlessness in individuals were more often found
among women than among men.

Thrale, with his perfectly careless courage, found
plenty of work for himself in London during May
and early June. He acted as a scavenger, and still
went far afield with his burial cart long after every
trace of living male humanity had disappeared from
the streets of London.

Then one day, at the end of June, he realized
that his task was futile, and it came to him that there
was work awaiting him of more importance than
this purification of streets which might never again
echo to the traffic of humanity.

So he chose the best bicycle he could find in
Holborn Viaduct, stripped a relay of four tyres from
other machines, and with these and a reserve of
food made into a somewhat cumbrous parcel, he
set out to explore the new world.

He took the Bath Road, intending to make
exploration of the fertile West Country. He had
Cornish blood in his veins, and his ultimate goal

234 GOSLINGS

was the county which had almost escaped urbaniza-
tion. As he then visualized the problem, it appeared
that life would offer greater possibilities in such
places.

But before he reached Colnbrook, he had recog-
nized that work was required of him nearer home.
The exodus was then in progress. He came through
armies of helpless women and children flying from
starvation; women who had no object in view save
that of escape to the country; " Silly Londoners "
with no knowledge of how food was to be obtained
when their goal was reached.

He did not stay there, however. He was beginning
to see the outline of his plan, and at the same time
the limitation of his own powers. He saw that
enough food could not be raised near London to
support the multitude, that the death of the many
was demanded by the needs of the few if any were
to survive, and that communities must be formed
with the common purpose of tilling the land and
excluding those who could not earn their right to
support. In such a catastrophe as this, charity became
a crime.

He intended even then to push on beyond
Reading, but in Maidenhead he met a woman
who influenced him to a nearer goal.

SHE stepped into the road and held up her hand.

Thrale stopped; he thought she was about to make
the familiar demand either for food or a direction.

LONDON TO MARLOW 235

"Well? "he said curtly.

" Where are you going? " she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders. " To find room," he
said.

" There is room for you near here," said the
woman, " if you'll work."

" At what? " he asked.

" Machinery, harvesting machinery, agricultural
machinery of all sorts."

"Where?" asked Thrale.

She dropped her voice and looked about her.
" Marlow," she said. " It— it's an eddy. Off the
main roads and by the river. There are less than a
thousand women there at present, and we are keep-
ing the others out; at least until after harvest. There
is plenty of land about, and we're keeping ourselves
at present. Only we do want a man for the machines.
Will you come and help us? "

" I'll come and see what I can do," said Thrale
" I won't promise to stay."

" Aren't there any other men, there? " he added
after a moment's hesitation.

" One at Wycombe," said the women. " He's a
butcher, but "

" I understand," said Thrale.

" And meanwhile you might help me," said the
woman. " I come over here with a horse and cart
to raid the seedsmen's shops. If we leave them the
women would eat all the beans and peas and things,
you know; enough to feed us for the winter gone in
a week, and no one any the better. Isn't it awful how
careless we are? "

236 GOSLINGS

4

SHE was a fair, clear-eyed girl, with the figure and
complexion of one who had devoted considerable
attention to outdoor sports. She was wearing a man's
Norfolk jacket (men's clothing was so plentiful),
and a skirt that barely reached her knees, and did
not entirely hide cloth knickerbockers which might
also have been adapted from a man's garment. Below
the knickerbockers she displayed thick stockings
and sandals. Her splendid fair hair furnished suffici-
ent protection for her head, and she had dressed a
pillow of it into the nape of her neck as a shield for
the sun.

Thrale looked at her with a frank curiosity as
they made their way up the town to a seedsman's
shop. She had left the horse and cart there, she
explained, while she explored other streets of the
town.

" Who are you? " he asked.

" Eileen, of Marlow," she said. " There doesn't
seem to be another Eileen there, so one name's
enough."

" Is that how your community feel about it? "
he asked.

She smiled. " We're beginning," she said.

He pondered that for a time, and then asked,
" Who were you? "

" Does it matter? " was the answer.

" Not in the least," said Thrale. " Never did
much so far as I was concerned, but I have a memory
of having seen your photographs in the illustrated

LONDON TO MARLOW 237

papers. I was wondering whether you had been
aclress, peeress, scandal; or perhaps all three."

She laughed. " I'm the eldest daughter of the
late Duke of Hertford," she said, " the ci-devant
Lady Eileen Ferrar, citizen."

" Oh, was that it? " replied Thrale carelessly.
" Where's this shop of yours? "

The loot was heavier than Eileen had anticipated.
The shop had been ransacked, but they found an
untouched store, containing such valuables as beans,
potatoes and a few small sacks of turnip seed at the
bottom of a yard. When these had been placed in
the cart, they decided that the load was sufficient
for one horse.

They took the longer road to Marlow, through
Bourne End, to avoid the hill. Eileen walked at the
horse's head, with Thrale beside her wheeling his
bicycle, and during those two hours he learnt much
of the little community which he proposed to serve
for a time.

It seemed that in Marlow — and the same thing
must have happened in a hundred other small towns
throughout the country — a few women had taken
control of the community. These women were of
all classes and the committee included an Earl's
widow, a national schoolmistress, a small green-
grocer, and an unmarried woman of property living
half a mile out of the town. These women had worked
together in an eminently practical way; at first to
relieve distress, and then to plan the future. They
had wasted little time in discussions among them-
selves— none of them had the parliamentary sense

238 GOSLINGS

of the uses of debate. When they had disagreed, they
had had plenty of scope to carry out varying methods
within their own spheres of influence.

Their first and most difficult task had been to
teach the members of their community to work for
the common good, and that task was by no means
perfected as yet. Co-operation was agreeable enough
to those who had nothing to lose, but the women in
temporary possession of the sources of food supply
were not so easily convinced. In many instances
the committee's arguments had been suddenly
clenched by an exposition of force majeure, and
property owners had discovered to their amazement
that they had no remedy.

But the head and leader of Marlow was a farmer's
daughter of nineteen, a certain Carrie Oliver. Her
father had had a small farm in the Chilterns not far
from Fingest. He had been a lazy, drunken creature,
and from the time Carrie had left the national
school she had practically carried on the work of
the farm single handed. She liked the work; the interest
of it absorbed her.

The Marlow schoolmistress had remembered her
when the committee had first faced the daunting
task of providing for the future. They had been more
or less capable of organizing a majority of the women,
but no member of the committee knew the secrets
of agriculture and stock-breeding, and in all Marlow
and the neighbourhood no woman had been found
who was capable of instructing them in all that was
necessary.

A deputation of three had been sent to Fingest,

LONDON TO MARLOW 239

and had discovered Miss Oliver in the midst of plenty,
cultivating her farm in comfort now that she had
been relieved of her father's unwelcome presence.

She had been covered with confusion when
requested to leave her retreat and take command of
a town and the surrounding twenty thousand acres
or so within reach of the new community.

" Oh! I can't," she had said, blushing and ducking
her head. " It's easy enough; I'll tell you if there's
anything you want to know."

The deputation had then put the case very clearly
before her, pointing out that in Miss Oliver's hands
lay the future of a thousand lives.

" Oh, dear. I dunno. What can / do? " Carrie
had said, and when the deputation had urged that
she should return with them and take charge forth-
with, she had replied that that was quite impossible,
that there were the cows to milk, the calves, pigs
and chickens to feed, and goodness knew how many
other necessary things to be done before sunset.

The deputation had said that cows, calves, horses,
sheep, pigs and chickens might and should be trans-
ferred forthwith to the neighbourhood of Marlow.

It had taken three days to convince her, Eileen
said, and added, " But she's splendid, now. It's
wonderful what a lot she knows; and she rides about
on a horse everywhere and sees to everything. The
difficulty is to stop her getting down and doing the
work herself."

Thrale understood that, exceptional male as he
was, his position in Marlow would be subordinate
to that of Miss Oliver.

240 GOSLINGS

" Does she understand agricultural machinery? "
he asked.

" Oh, yes," returned Eileen. "But she hasn't time,
you see, to attend to all that, and it's so jolly difficult
to learn. I've been doing a bit. I'm better at it than
most of 'em. But when I saw you it struck me how
ripping it would be if you'd come and take over that
side. Men are so jolly good at machinery. We
shouldn't miss them much if it weren't for that."

5'

AFTER a marked preliminary hesitation the com-
mittee appointed Jasper Thrale chief mechanic of
Marlow. The hesitation was understandable. Their
only experience of the ways of men in this altered
civilization had been drawn from observations of
Mr Evans at Wycombe. His manner of life appeared
representative of what they might expect. Never-
theless they did not openly condemn him, although
he proved an immediate source of trouble, even to
these organizers in Marlow. The youth of the place
was apt to wander over the hill in the evenings;
" just for fun," they said. They went in twos and
threes, and occasionally one of them stayed behind.
These evening walks interfered with work. " Later
on I shouldn't mind so much," Lady Durham had
said, commenting on the loss of a young and active
worker, " but there is so much to do just now."
Her comment showed that even then the situation
was being accepted, and that many women were
prepared to adapt their old opinions to new con-

LONDON TO MARLOW 241

ditions. It also showed why the committee hesitated
to accept Thrale's services.

Thrale understood their difficulty, and went
straight to the point.

" You are afraid that the young women will be
wasting time, running after me," he said. " Set your
minds at rest. That won't last. And if you give me
pupils for my machinery I should prefer women
over forty in any case. I believe I shall find them
more capable."

He was right in one way. When the excitement of
his coming had subsided, he was not the cause of
much wasted time. He adopted a manner with the
younger women which did not encourage advances.
He was, in fact, quite brutally frank. When the
young women devised all kinds of impossible excuses
to linger in his vicinity he sent them away with hot
indignant faces. Among those who sought their
sterile amusements inWycombe it became the fashion
openly to express hatred and contempt for " that
engine fellow." It was agreed that he " wasn't a
proper man." Another section, however, talked
scandal, and hinted that assistant-engineer Eileen
was the cause of Thrale's pretended misogyny.

The committee found their work more com-
plicated in some respects after Thrale's coming.

Thrale, himself, was supremely indifferent to any
scandal or expression of hatred. He had his hands
full, his hours of work were only limited by daylight,
and six hours sleep was all he asked for or desired.
After a very brief introduction to the intricacies
of reaper and rake at the hands of Miss Oliver — her

242 GOSLINGS

father had never been able to afford a binder, but
the days of corn-harvest were still far ahead — he
set himself to learn the mysteries of all the agricultural
machinery in the neighbourhood; traction engines,
steam ploughs and thrashing machines, and to pass
on the knowledge he gained to his pupils. He found
them stupid at first, but they were patient and
willing for the most part.

Then, handicapped by the lack of coal, he rode
over to Bourne End and discovered two locomotives.
One of them was standing on the line a mile out
of the station with a full complement of coaches
attached, the other was an unencumbered goods
engine in a siding. He chose the latter for his first
experiment, and succeeded in driving it back to
Marlow. It groaned and screamed in a way that
indicated serious organic trouble, but after he had
overhauled it, it proved capable of taking him to
Maidenhead, where he found a sound engine in
a shed.

After that he devoted three days to getting a
clear line to Paddington, a tedious process which
involved endless descents from the cab, and
mountings into signal boxes, experiments with levers
and the occasional necessity for pushing whole
trains out of his path into some siding. But at last
he returned with magnificent loot of coal from the
almost untouched London yards beyond Ealing.

London was still the storehouse of certain valuable
commodities.

His passage through the surrounding country
was hailed with cries of amazement and jubilant

LONDON TO MARLOW 243

acclamation. The first railway surely excited less
astonishment than did Thrale on his solitary engine.
Doubtless the unfortunate women who saw him
pass believed that the gods of machinery had
returned once more to bring relief from all the bur-
den of misery and unfamiliar work.

And once the points were set and the way open
to London by rail he could go and return with tools
and many other necessaries that had offered no
temptation to the starving multitude who had fled
from the town.

Marlow was greatly blessed among the com-
munities in those days.

THE harvest was early that year, and Miss Oliver
decided to cut certain fields of barley at the end of

Thrale's energies were then diverted to the
superintendence of the reapers and binders, and he
rode from field to field, overlooking the work of his
pupils or spending furious hours in struggle with
some refractory mechanism.

One Saturday, an hour or two after midday, he
was returning from some such struggle, when he
saw a strange procession coming down that long hill
from Handy Cross, which some pious women
regarded as the road to hell.

Casual immigration had almost ceased by that
time, but the sight indicated the necessity for
immediate action. The immigration laws of Marlow,

R2

244 GOSLINGS

though not coded as yet, were strict; and only
bona fide workers were admitted, and even those
were critically examined.

Thrale shouted to attract attention and the
procession stopped.

When he came through the gate on to the road,
he was accosted by name.

" Oh, Mr Thrale, fancy finding you," said the
young woman at the pole of the truck.

The meeting of Livingstone and Stanley was far
less amazing.

An old woman perched on the truck and partly
sheltered by the remains of an umbrella, regarded
his appearance with some show of displeasure.

" By rights 'e should 'ave written to me in the
first place," she muttered.

" Mother's got a touch of the sun," explained
Blanche hurriedly.

Thrale had not yet spoken. He was considering
the problem of whether he owed any duty to these
wanderers, which could override his duty to
Marlow.

" Where have you come from? " he asked.

Blanche and Millie explained volubly, by turns
and together.

" You see, we don't let anyone stay here," said
Thrale.

Blanche's eyebrows went up and she waved her
too exuberant sister aside. " We're willing to work,"
she said.

" And your mother? " queried Thrale. " And
this other woman ? "

LONDON TO MARLOW 245

" Ach! I work too," put in Mrs Isaacson. " I have
learnt all that is necessary for the farm. I milk and
feed chickens and everything."

" You'll have to come before the committee,"
said Thrale.

" Anywhere out of the sun," replied Blanche,
" and somewhere where we can put mother. She's
very bad, I'm afraid."

" You can stay to-night, anyway," returned
Thrale.

Millie made a face at him behind his back, and
whispered to Mrs Isaacson, who pursed her mouth.

" Well, you do seem more civilized here," re-
marked Blanche as the procession restarted towards
Marlow. Thrale, with something of the air of a
policeman, was walking by the side of the pole.

"You've come at a good time," was his only
comment.

Millie had another shock before they reached the
town. She saw what she thought was a second man,
on horseback this time, coming towards them.
Marlow, she thought, was evidently a place to live
in. But the figure was only that of Miss Oliver in
corduroy trousers, riding astride.

FATE had dropped the Goslings into Buckingham-
shire to fulfil their destiny. They had been led to
Marlow by a casual direction, here and there, after
the first propulsion of Blanche's instinct had sent
them into the country beyond Harrow. And fate,

246 GOSLINGS

doubtless with some incomprehensible purpose of
its own in view, had quietly decided that in Marlow
they were to stay. They had been dropped at a
season when, for the first time in the long three
months' history of the community, there was a
shortage of labour; and Blanche and Millie, browned
by exposure and generally improved by their first
six days of healthy life, were quite acceptable addi-
tions to the population at that moment. As for
Mrs Isaacson, a lady of sufficient initiative and force
of character to require no kindly interposition of
Providence on her behalf, she arranged her own
future as an expert of farm management, and
incidentally as the Goslings' housemate. Mrs Isaacson
was a burr that would stick anywhere for a time.
She displayed an unexpected and highly specialized
knowledge of the management of farms, when
confronted with the expert Miss Oliver who was
far too embarrassed to press her questions home.
The casual remarks of Aunt May and her helpers
had been retained in Mrs Isaacson's brilliant memory
and she displayed her knowledge to the best possible
advantage, filling the gaps with irrelevant volubility,
gesture and histrionic struggles with the English
language, which proved suddenly inadequate to the
expression of these recondities that the German
would have so aptly expressed. It was inferred that
in her native Bavaria, Mrs Isaacson had farmed in
the grand style.

Only Mrs Gosling, useless and ineligible, remained
for consideration, and she for once took a firm line
of her own, and defied the committee, Marlow

LONDON TO MARLOW 247

generally, and the negligible remainder of the
cosmos, to alter her determination.

The home at which they had finally arrived did
not suit her. The tiny cottage of three rooms in
the little street that runs down to the town landing
stage had no lace curtains in the front window,
no suites of furniture, no hall to save the discreet
caller from stepping through the front door straight
into the single living-room, no accumulation of
dustable ornaments, not even a strip of carpet or
linoleum to cover the nakedness of a bricked floor.
It was not civilized; it was not decent according to
the refined standards of Wisteria Grove; it was an
impossible place for any respectable woman to live
in, and Mrs Gosling, with unexpected force of
character, chose the obvious alternative. She did not,
however, make any announcement of her determina-
tion; she was wrapped in a speculative depression
that found no relief in words. She had been so ordered,
hoisted, dragged and bumped through the detested
country during the past six days that all show of
authority had been taken from her. It may be that
deep in her own mind she cherished a sullen and
enduring resentment against her daughters, and had
vowed to take the last and unanswerable revenge of
which humanity is capable. But outwardly she
preserved that air of incomprehension which had
marked her during the last stages of their journey,
and committed herself to no statement of the
enormous plan which must have been forming in
her mind.

When they took her into the small, brick-paved

248 GOSLINGS

room and deposited her temporarily on a wooden-
seated chair, while they unpacked what remainded
to them in the accursed trolly, Mrs Gosling took
one brief but comprehensive survey of her naked
surroundings.

" She's a bit touched, isn't she? " whispered
Millie to her sister. " Do you think she understands
where we are or what we're doing? "

Blanche shook her head. " I expect she'll be all
right in a day or two," she ventured, " It's the sun."

The two girls, stirred to a new outlook on life
by the extraordinary experiences of the past months,
were on the threshold of diverse adventures. After
the toil and anxiety of their tramp through inhospit-
able country, and the hazard of the open air, this
reception into a community and settlement into a
permanent shelter afforded a relief which was too
unexpected to be qualified as yet by criticism, or
any comparison with past glories. They were young
and plastic, and to each of them the future seemed
to hold some promise; to them the silence and
immobility of their mother could only be evidence
of impaired faculties.

" We must get her to bed," said Blanche.

Even when Mrs Gosling asked with perfect rele-
vance, " Are we going to stop 'ere, Blanche? " they
humoured her with evasive replies. " Well, for a day
or two, perhaps," and " Look here, don't you worry
about that. We're going to put you to bed."

Her head dropped again and she fell back into
her moody silence. Doubtless she meditated on
the many wrongs her daughters had done her, and

LONDON TO MARLOW 249

wondered why she should have been brought out
to die in this wilderness?

During the nine days that elapsed before her plan
matured, she made no further comment on her
surroundings. She lay in the upstairs room, sleeping
little, with no desire ever again to face the terror
of a world which demanded a new mode of thought.
Unconsciously she had adopted Blanche's phrase,
" Everything's different," but to her the message
was one of doom, she could not live in a different
world.

And Blanche on her side was puzzled at her
mother's apathy and said, " I can't understand it."
Yet both the changed conditions and Mrs Gosling's
unchangeable habit were fundamental things.

XVIII— MODES OF EXPRESSION

IN Marlow that year harvesting and thrashing were
carried on simultaneously. August was very dry, and
the greater part of the corn was never stacked at all.
Thrale took his engines into the fields, and the shocks
were loaded on to carts and fed directly into the
thrasher. This method entailed some disadvantages,
chief among them the retarding of the actual
harvest-work, but on the whole it probably econom-
ized labour. The scheme would doubtless have been
impracticable in the days of small private ownership,
but it worked well in this instance, favoured as it
was by the drought.

The saving of labour during those six weeks of
furious toil was a matter of the first importance.
The work, indeed, was too heavy for many of the
women who were unable to stand the physical strain
of hoisting sheaves from the waggons into the thrasher ;
and the sacks of grain proved so unmanageable that
Thrale had to devise a makeshift hoist for loading
them into the carts. In Marlow, at least, machinery
was still triumphant, and the committee sighed their
relief in the sentence : " I don't know what we should
have done without Jasper Thrale." Nevertheless it
is quite certain that they would have done without
him if it had not been for that fortuitous meeting
in Maidenhead.

250

MODES OF EXPRESSION 25 1

For Thrale there was no rest possible, even when
the last field had been cleared and the last clumsily-
built stack of straw or unthrashed corn creeled.
Besides the necessity for some form of thatching —
or, failing efficiency in that direction, for completing
the thrashing operations — he had to turn his
attention to the immensely difficult problem of
turning the grain into flour. He knew vaguely that
the grain ought to be cleaned and conditioned before
grinding, and that the actual separation of the
constituents of the berry was a matter of importance;
but he had no practical knowledge of the various
operations, and in this matter Miss Oliver was quite
unable to help him.

The mill beside the lock presented itself as an
intricate and enormously detailed problem which
must be solved by a concentrated effort of induction.
The only person who appeared to be of real assistance
to him was Eileen, and she was apt to tire and fall
into despair when the detail of involved and often
concealed machinery baffled them for hour after
hour. Nevertheless Thrale solved this problem also.
His first concern was for a head of water. The weirs
had not been touched since the beginning of May,
and the river was very low, but by mid-September
there was enough water to work for a few hours
every day, and, despite endless mistakes and setbacks,
the mill was turning out a sufficient supply of fairly
respectable looking flour.

Thrale had that wonderful masculine faculty for
thus applying himself to a mechanical problem, and,
like his predecessors in mechanical invention, it was

252 GOSLINGS

the problem and not any promise of future reward
which interested him. He became absorbed for the
time in that problem of grinding corn, grudging the
hours he was obliged to devote to other activities;
and when he felt the throb of life running through
the mill, saw the women he had taught attending
each to their own appointed task in the economy,
and felt the touch of the fine, smooth flour between
his fingers, he needed no thanks from the committee
nor promise of independence to reward him for his
labour. The sight of this thing he had created was
sufficient recompense. He loved this beautiful
efficient toy that changed wheat into flour, and oats
into meal, it was his to father and to fight for; the
perf ect child of his ingenuity and toil.

But if Thrale's time was tremendously occupied
the women found that they had more opportunities
for leisure after harvest. They were still employed
in field and garden, and there was still much to be
done, but their hours were shorter and the work
seemed light in contrast with the heroic labour that
had been necessary at the harvest.

And with this first coming of comparative ease,
this first opportunity for reflection since the terrible
plague had thrust upon them the necessity for
fierce and unremitting effort to produce the essentials
of life, women began to express themselves in their
various ways. Aspirations and emotions that had
been crushed by the fatigues of physical labour began
to revive; personal inclinations, jealousies and
resentments became manifest in the detail of inter-
course; old prejudices, religious and social, once

MODES OF EXPRESSION 253

more assumed an aspect of importance in the inter-
actions of individuals. There was a faint stir in the
community, the first sign of a trouble which was
steadily to increase as winter laid its bond upon the
storehouses of earth.

THE two Goslings, working only six or seven hours
a day in the mill during the latter part of September,
found plenty of time for chatter and speculation.
They, and more especially Blanche, had shown them-
selves capable workers in the harvest field, but when
hands had been required in his mill Thrale had
chosen the Goslings and those whom he considered
less adapted to field work; and among them Mrs
Isaacson and a member of the committee, Miss
Jenkyn, the schoolmistress. (The education problem
was in abeyance for the time being. The children
had run wild for three months, and been sub] eel:
only to the discipline of their mothers, but it was
understood that the children were to receive atten-
tion when the winter brought opportunity.)

Blanche soon distinguished herself as a picked
worker in this sphere. Her intelligence was of a
somewhat more masculine quality in some respects
than that of the average woman; she was slower,
more detailed, more logical in her methods. And
now that those male characteristics — so often de-
plored by women in the days before the plague —
had been withdrawn from the flux of life, it had
become evident that they had been an essential part

254 GOSLINGS

of the whole, if only a part. Masculine characteristics
were at a premium in Marlow that autumn, and
as a natural consequence were being rated at an ever
higher value. There was a tendency among some
women to become more male. . . .

Millie, however, was not among the progressives.
She was not gifted intellectually; she had no swift
intuitions — such as Eileen had — which enabled her
to comprehend her work; she was naturally indolent,
and all her emotions came to her through sensation.

When she was put to work in the mill she was
secretly elated. She did not believe the stories told
of Jasper Thrale's insensibility to feminine attrac-
tions, and if she believed those other stories which
coupled his name with that of Lady Eileen, Millie
was of opinion that such an entanglement was not
necessarily final.

The first week of her association with Thrale in
the work of the mill brought disillusionment.

When she looked up from her work and caught
his eye as he passed her, he either stared coldly or
stopped and asked in a businesslike, austere voice
whether she wanted assistance. Such intimations
should have been sufficient, but in this thing, at
least, Millie was persistent. She thought that
he did not understand — men were proverbially
stupid in these matters. So she waited for an
opportunity and within ten days one was pre-
sented.

A hesitation in some of the machinery she over-
looked provided sufficient excuse for calling the
head engineer. She looked down the step-ladder

MODES OF EXPRESSION 255

which communicated with the floor below and
called hesitatingly, " Oh! Please. Mr Thrale."

He heard her and looked up, " What is it? " he
asked.

" Something gone wrong," she said blushing,
" I've stopped the rollers, but I don't know "

" All right, I'm coming," he returned, and
presently joined her.

" By the way," he remarked as he began to exam-
ine the machine, " we don't say * Mister,' now. I
thought you'd learnt that."

Millie simpered. " It sounds so familiar not to,"
she said.

" Rubbish," grunted Thrale. " You can call me
1 engineer,' I suppose?

" Now, look here," he continued, " do you see
this hopper in here? "

She came close to him and peered into the
machine.

" It gets clogged, do you see? " said Thrale, " and
when the meal stutters you've just got to put your
hand in and clear it. Understand? "

" I think so," hesitated Millie. She was leaning
against him and her body was trembling with delici-
ous excitement. Almost unconsciously she pressed a
little closer.

Thrale suddenly drewback. "Do you understand?"
he said harshly.

" Ye-yes, I think so," returned Millie; and she
straightened herself, looked up at him for a moment
and then dropped her eyes, blushing.

" Very well," said Thrale, " and here's another

256 GOSLINGS

piece of advice for you. If you want to stay in the
mill keep your attention on your work. You're a
man now, for all intents and purposes; you've got
a man's work to do, and you must keep your mind on
it. If there's any foolishness you go out into the
turnip fields. You won't have another warning," he
concluded as he turned and left her.

" Beast," muttered Millie when she was alone.
She was shaken with furious anger. " I hate you,
you silly stuck up thing," she whispered fiercely
shaking with passion. " Oh, I wish you only knew
how I hate you. I won't touch your beastly machines
again. I'd sooner a million times be out in the turnip
field than in the same mill with you, you stuck up
beast. I won't work, I won't do a thing, I'll — I'll "

For a time she was hysterical.

Blanche coming down from the floor above found
her sister tearing at her hair.

" Good heavens, Mill, what's up? " she asked.

Millie had passed through the worst stages of
her seizure by then, and she dropped her hands. " I
dunno," she said. " It's this beastly mill, I suppose."

" I like it," returned Blanche.

" Oh, you," said Millie, full of scorn for Blanche's
frigidity. " You ought to have been a man, you
ought."

" I dunno what's come to you," was Blanche's
comment.

IT was maturity that had come to Millie. Her new
life of air and physical exercise had set the blood

MODES OF EXPRESSION 257

running in her veins. In the Wisteria Grove days
she had had an anaemic tendency; the limited routine
of her existence and all the suppressions of her
narrow life had retarded her development. Now she
was suddenly ripe. Two months of sun and air had
brought superabundant vitality, and the surplus had
become the most important factor in her existence
She found no outlet for her new vigour in the work
of the mill. Something within her was crying out
for joy. She wanted to find expression.

There were many other young women in Marlow
that autumn in similar case, and a rumour was
current among them that this was a favourable time
for crossing the hill. It was said that the lord of
Wycombe was seeking new favourites.

Millie heard the rumour and tossed her head
superciliously.

" Let him come here. I'd give him a piece of my
mind," she said.

" He doesn't come 'ere," returned the gossip.
" 'E's afeard of our Mr Thrale."

" Oh! Jasper Thrale! " said Millie. " That fellow
from Wycombe could knock his head off in no
time."

The gossip was doubtful.

Millie was incapable of formulating a plan in this
connexion, but she was seized with a desire for
spending the still September evenings in the open
air, and always something drew her towards the hill
at Handy Cross. That way lay interest and excite-
ment. There was a wonderful fascination in going
as far as the top of the descent into Wycombe.

258 GOSLINGS

Usually she joined one or two other young women
in these excursions. It was understood between them
that they went " for fun," and they would laugh
and scream when they reached the dip past the
farm, pretend to push each other down the slope,
and cry out suddenly: " He's coming! Run! "

But one afternoon, some ten days after Jasper
Thrale had threatened her with the turnip field,
Millie went alone.

She had left work early. The rain had not come
yet, and Thrale was becoming anxious with regard
to the shortage of water. He had the sluices of
Marlow and Hedsor weirs closed, and had opened the
sluices of the weirs above as far as Hambledon, but
so little water was coming down that he decided to
work shorter hours for the present.

Blanche had stayed on at the mill to help with
repairs. She was rapidly developing into a capable
engineer. So Millie, whose only service was that of
machine minder, found herself alone and unoccu-
pied.

Every one else seemed to be working. Her friends
of the evening excursions were mostly in the fields
on the Henley side of the town.

Millie decided she would lie down on the bed and
go to sleep for a bit; but even before she came to
the cottage she changed her mind. It was a deli-
ciously warm, still afternoon.

Almost automatically she took the road towards
Little Marlow; a desire for adventure had overtaken
her. Why, she argued, shouldn't she go into
Wycombe? There were plenty of other women

MODES OF EXPRESSION 259

there. She would be quite safe. She only wanted to
see what the place was like.

Her consciousness of perfect rectitude lasted until
she reached the dip beyond Handy Cross. Farther
than this she had not ventured before. Some
mystery lay beyond the turn of the road.

She sat down in the grass by the wayside and
called herself a fool, but she was afraid to go further.
She and those friends of hers had made this place
the entrance to a terrible and fascinating beyond.
She remembered how they had feared to stay there
in the failing light, daring each other to remain
there alone after sunset. There was nothing to be
afraid of, she said to herself; and yet she was afraid.

She was hot with her long climb, and the place
was quite deserted. She decided to take down her
hair to cool herself.

Curiously, she looked upon this simple act as
deliciously daring and in some way wicked. She
cast half -fearful glances at the green girt shadows of
the descending road, as she shook out the masses of
her hair. " If anyone should come! " she thought.
" If he should come . . . ! "

She giggled nervously, and shivered.

But as time passed, and no one came, she began
to lose her fear, and presently she lay full length on
the grass, and stared up into the pale blue dome of
the sky until her eyes ached and she had to close
them. The deep hush of the still afternoon enveloped
her in a great calm.

For a time she slept peacefully, and then she
dreamed that she was rushing through the air, and

S2

260 GOSLINGS

that some one chased her. She wanted desperately
to be captured, but it was ordained that she must
fly, and she flew incredibly fast. She flew through
the sunlight into darkness, and awoke to find that
some one was standing between her and the sun.

She lay still, paralysed with terror. She bitterly
regretted her coming. She would have given ten
years of life to be safe home in Marlow.

" Now, where' ve I seen you before? " asked Sam
Evans. . . .

It was nearly dark when Blanche accosted a knot
of women in the High Street with a question as to
whether they had seen anything of her sister.

One of the women laughed sneeringly. " Ah!
She went over the hill this afternoon," she said.
" We were in the fields that side, and saw her go."

Blanche's face burned. " She hasn't! I know she
hasn't!" she blurted out. "She isn't one of that
sort."

The woman laughed again.

" She's one of the lucky ones," another woman
remarked. " You can expect her back in a week or
two's time."

4

ON the same evening that Millie crossed the hill,
Lady Eileen Ferrar encountered the spirit of passion
in another shape.

The thought of a lonely bathe tempted her, and
she crossed the river, made her way through de-
serted Bisham, and back to the stream along a
narrow, overhung lane beyond Bisham Abbey.

MODES OF EXPRESSION 261

The sun had set, but when she came out from the
trees there was light in the sky and on the water.
Overhead a few wisps of cirrus, sailing in the far
heights of air, still caught the direct rays of the sun.
Eileen paused on the bank, rejoicing in the glow of
colour about her; but as she gazed, the little fleet
of salmon-tinted clouds were engulfed in the great
earth-shadow, and the delicate crisp rose-leaves
were transfigured into flat stipples of steel grey.

A slight chill had come into the air, but the water
was deliciously soft and warm. Eileen swam a couple
of hundred yards up-stream, towards the gloom of
shadows that obscured the course of the river.
The after-glow was fading now, and though the
surface of the water seemed to catch some reflection
of light from an unknown source, the near distance
loomed dark and mysterious. She trod water for a
few moments, but could not decide whether the
river turned to right or left. To all appearances, it
terminated abruptly fifty yards ahead. . . .

A new sound was forcing itself upon her attention
— a low, steady booming. She stopped swimming,
and, keeping herself afloat by slow, silent movements
of hands and feet under water, she listened at-
tentively. The dull boom seemed changed into a
low, ceaseless moan.

She remembered then the recently opened sluices
of Temple Weir, but quite suddenly she was aware
of fear. She thought she saw a movement among
the reeds by the bank. She thought she heard
laughter and the thin pipe of a flute.

Were the old gods coming back to witness the

262 GOSLINGS

death of man, as they had witnessed his birth?
Now that machinery and civilization were being
re-absorbed into the nature-spirit from which they
had been wrung by the force of man's devilish and
alien intelligence, were the old things returning for
one mad revel before the creatures of their sport
disappeared for ever, these representatives of a
species which had failed to hold its own in the
struggle for existence?

Night was coming up like a shadow, and in the
east a red, enormous moon was rising, coming not
to dissipate, but to enhance the mysteries of the
dark, coming to countenance the wild and blind the
eyes of man.

Eileen, almost motionless, was floating down with
the drift of the sluggish stream. She was afraid to
intrude upon the natural sounds of the night, the
stealthy trickle of the river, and the furtive rustle
of secret movement whose origin she could not
guess. And again she thought that she heard the
trembling reed of a distant flute.

She touched bottom near her landing-place, and
waded out of the river, crouching, afraid even in the
black shadow of the trees to exhibit the white
column of her slim body. She dried and dressed
hastily, and when she felt again the touch of her
familiar clothes about her, she knew that she was
safe from the wiles of nymph or satyr. She had
come out of the half-world that interposes be-
tween man and Nature; her clothes made her
invisible to the earth-gods, and hid them from
her knowledge.

MODES OF EXPRESSION 263

But she was still trembling and afraid. The flesh
had terrors great as those of the spirit.

A little uncertain wind was coming out of the
south-west, and the trees were stirred now and
again into hushed whisperings. A dead leaf brushed
her face in falling, and she started back, thrusting
at an imaginary enemy with nervously agitated
hands.

The thought of her remoteness from life terrified
her. She was alone, face to face with implacable,
brutal Nature. Man, the boastful, full of foolish
pride, was vanishing from the earth. He had been
an alien, ever out of place, defiling and corrupting
the order of growth. Now he was beaten and a
fugitive. All around her, the representative of this
vile destructive species, was the slow, persistent
hatred of the earth, which longed to be at peace
again. There was no god favourable to man, now
that he was dying; the gods of man's creation would
perish with him. Only a few women were left to
realize that they were strangers in the world of
Nature which hated them. The world was not
theirs, had never been theirs; they were only some
horrible, unnatural fungus that had disfigured the
Earth for a time. . . .

She moved cautiously and slowly under the
darkness of the trees, and even when she came back
to the road she could not shake off her fear. On her
right she could see the black cliff of the woods,
transfigured by the light of the moon. In the
day she knew them for woods ; now they were
strange and threatening; they menaced her with

264 GOSLINGS

invasion. She knew that they would march down
from the hills and swarm across the valley. In a
hundred, two hundred years, Marlow would be a
few heaps of brick and stone lost in the heart of the
forest.

Ashamed of her race, she hurried on stealthily
towards the bridge.

But before she reached it, she heard the sound
of a firm, defiant step coming towards her. She
paused and listened, and her fear fell from her. In
the old days she would have feared man more than
Nature, feared robbery or assault, but now, man
was united in a common cause ; the sound of humanity
was the sound of a friend.

" Hullo! " she called, and the voice of Jasper
Thrale answered. " Hullo! Who's that? " he said.

" Me — Eileen," she replied. " I've been for a
bathe."

He paused opposite her, and they looked at one
another.

" Jolly night," he remarked.

" I've seen the great god Pan," said Eileen.
" Those sailors in the Ionian Sea were misinformed.
He's not dead."

" Why should Pan die and Dionysus live? " re-
turned Thrale. " I hear that Dionysus has claimed
one of our hands, by the way."

" Millie? "

" Yes. "

" Are you angry? "

" Yes. Not with Millie. If you saw Pan, why
shouldn't she see Dionysus? No, I'm angry with the

MODES OF EXPRESSION 265

Jenkyn woman. She's saying that we ought not to
have Millie back if she wants to come."

" How silly! " commented Eileen.

" Oh! if that were all! " replied Thrale. « The real
trouble is that the Jenkyn woman is proselytizing.
She wants to revive Church services and Sunday
observances. We're going to have a split before the
winter's over, and all the old misunderstandings and
antagonisms back again."

' Why, of course we are," returned Eileen, after
a pause. " We are going to divide into those that are
afraid and those that aren't. It's fear that's got hold
of us, now we've time to think. It's all about us
to-night; I've seen it, and Millie has seen it; and
Clara Jenkyn and all those who are going with her
have seen it; and we've all got to find our own way
out." She hesitated for a moment, and then said:
" And what about you? Have you seen it? "

" Yes, for the first time. Within the last ten
minutes," said Thrale.

The moon was above the trees now, and she could
see his face clearly. " Have you? " she asked. " I
can't picture it. It can't be Pan or Dionysus, or
fear of the Earth or of humanity. No; and it can't
be the most terrible of all, the fear of an idea.
What are you afraid of ? "

" I'm afraid of you," said Thrale, and he turned
away quickly and hurried on in the direction of the
river.

" I did see Pan," affirmed Eileen, as she re-
turned, happy and unafraid, towards Marlow.

266 GOSLINGS

5

THAT mood of the night had suggested to Eileen
the idea of a single cause which seemed sufficient to
account for the revivalist tendencies of Miss Jenkyn
and certain other women in Marlow. Fear was
presented as a simple explanation, and Eileen, like
many other philosophers who had preceded her, was
too eager for the simple and inclusive explanation.

At first the revivalist tendency was feeble and
circumscribed. Twenty or thirty women met in the
schoolroom and talked and prayed by the light of a
single, tenderly nursed oil-lamp. The absence of any
minister kept them back at first; the less earnest
needed some concrete embodiment of religion in
the form of a black coat and white tie.

But when the rain came in early October, came
and persisted; when the beeches, instead of flaring
into scarlet, grew sodden and dead; when the threat
of flood grew even more imminent, and the dis-
traction of physical toil almost ceased, this little
nucleus of women was joined by many new recruits,
and their comparatively harmless prostrations,
lamentations and worshippings of the abstract, de-
veloped into an attempt to enforce a moral law upon
the community.

Millie Gosling, returning to Marlow in mid-
October, gave the religionists splendid opportunity
for a first demonstration.

Millie returned with a bold face and a shrinking
heart. She had fled from Wycombe because she could
not meet the taunts of the women who had so lately

MODES OF EXPRESSION 267

envied her as she rode, prime favourite for a time,
in the Dionysian landau. A great loneliness had
come over her after she was dethroned; she needed
sympathy, and she hoped that Blanche might be
made to understand. Millie came back from over
the hill prepared with a long tale of excuses.

She found her sister perfectly complacent.

Blanche was a fervent disciple of Jasper Thrale
and machinery, and Thrale had anticipated Millie's
return and in some ways prepared for it. At odd
moments he had preached the new gospel, the tenets
of which Blanche had begun to formulate for herself.

" It's no good going back to the old morality for
a precedent," had been the essential argument used
by Thrale; " we have to face new conditions. If a
man is only to have one wife now, the race will
decline, probably perish. It is a woman's duty to
bear children."

Eileen, Blanche and a few other young women
had wondered that he made no application of the
argument to his own case, but his opinion carried
more weight by reason of his continence. Even Miss
Jenkyn could not urge that his opinion was framed
to defend his own mode of life, and, failing that
casuistical support, she had to fall back on the
second alternative of her kind, namely, to assert that
this preacher of antagonistic opinions was either the
devil in person or possessed by him — a line of
defence which took longer to establish than the
gimple accusation of expediency.

So Millie, returning one wet October afternoon,
found that no excuses were required of her. Blanche

268 GOSLINGS

welcomed her and asked no questions, and Jasper
Thrale and Eileen came to the little cottage in
St Peter's Street at sunset and treated the prodigal
Millie with a new and altogether delightful friendli-
ness. It was understood that she would return at
once to her work in the Mill. But in the school-
house opposite another reception was being pre-
pared for her.

The more advanced of the Jenkynites were for
taking immediate action. Prayer, worship, and the
acknowledgment of personal sin fell into the back-
ground that evening, Millie appeared not as a brand
to be saved from the burning, but as an abandoned
and evil creature who must be thrust out of the
community if any member of it was to save her soul
alive. Every one of these furious religionists could
stand up and declare that she was innocent of the
commission of this particular sin of Millie's, and
every one was willing and anxious to cast the first
stone.

The meeting simmered, and at last boiled over
into St Peter's Street. A band of more than a dozen
rigidly virtuous and ecstatically Christian women
beat at the door of the Goslings' cottage. They had
come to denounce sin and thrust the sinner out of
the community with physical violence. Each of them
in her own heart thought of herself as the bride of
Christ.

The door was opened to them by Jasper Thrale.

" We have come to cast out the evil one! " cried
Miss Jenkyn in a high emotional voice.

" What are you talking about? " asked Thrale.

MODES OF EXPRESSION 269

"She shall be cast forth from our midst!"
shrilled Miss Jenkyn; and her supporters raised a
horrible screaming cry of agreement.

" Cast her forth! " they cried, finding full
justification for their high pitch of emotion in the
use of Biblical phrase.

" Cast forth your grandmother! " replied Thrale
calmly. " Get back to your homes, and don't be
foolish."

" He is possessed of the devil! " chanted Miss
Jenkyn. " The Lord has called upon us to vindicate
his honour and glory. This man, too, must not be
suffered to dwell in the congregation."

" Down with him! down with him! " assented
the little crowd, now so exalted with the glory of
their common purpose that they were ready for
martyrdom.

Miss Jenkyn was an undersized, withered little
spinster of forty-five, and physically impotent; but,
drunk with the fervour of her emotion, and en-
couraged by the sympathy of her followers and the
fury of her own voice, she flung herself fiercely
upon the calm figure of Jasper Thrale. Her thwarted
self-expression had found an outlet. She desired the
blood of Millie Gosling and Jasper Thrale with the
same intensity that women had once desired a useless
vote.

Jasper Thrale put out a careless hand and pushed
her back into the arms of the women behind her;
but she was up again instantly, and, backed by the
crowd, who, encouraging themselves by shrill
screams of " Cast them forth! " were now thrusting

27o GOSLINGS

forward into the narrow doorway, she renewed the
assault with all the fierce energy of a struggling kitten.

" I shall lose my temper in a minute," said Thrale,
as he took a step forward and, bracing himself
against the door frame, drove the women back with
vigorous thrusts of his powerful arms.

To lose his temper, indeed, seemed the only way
of escape; to give way to berserk rage, and so to
injure these muscularly feeble creatures that they
would be unable to continue the struggle. But
the babble of screaming voices was bringing other
helpers to his aid, chief among them Lady Durham,
and her cold, clear voice fell on the hysterical
Jenkynites like a douche of cold water.

" Clara Jenkyn, what are you doing? " asked
Elsie Durham.

" Millie Gosling must be cast forth," wavered
the little dishevelled woman; but this time there was
no reponse from her disciples.

" That is a question for the committee," replied
Elsie Durham. " Now, please go to your homes, all
of you."

Miss Jenkyn tried to explain.

Elsie Durham walked into the cottage and shut the
door.

Inside, Eileen and Blanche were trying to reassure
the trembling Millie. Outside, the Jenkynites were
suffering a more brutal martyrdom than that they
had sought. The tongues of the new arrivals, the
fuller-blooded, more physically vigorous members
of the community, were making sport of these
brides of Christ.

MODES OF EXPRESSION 27 1

BUT the women of Marlow were to learn afresh the
old lesson that religious enthusiasm is not to be
killed by ridicule or oppression. Jasper Thrale
understood and appreciated that fa£t, but the
policy he suggested could not be approved by the
committee.

" This emotion is a fundamental thing," he said
to Lady Durham, " and history will show you that
persecution will intensify it to the point of martyr-
dom. There is only one way to combat it. Give it
room. Let them do as they will. The heat of the fire
is too fierce for you to damp it down; you only
supply more fuel. Fan it, throw it open to the air,
and it will burn itself harmlessly out."

Elsie Durham shrugged her shoulders. " That's
all very well," she said. " I believe it's perfectly
true. But they make you the bone of contention.
If it were only Millie Gosling — well — she might go.
We could find a place for her — at Fingest, perhaps.
But we can't spare you."

" I don't know why not," returned Thrale. " I
never intended to stay indefinitely. You can carry
on now without me, and I can fulfil my original
intention and push on into the West."

" My dear man! we can't, and we won't! " said
Elsie Durham. " You are indispensable."

" No one is indispensable," replied Thrale.

" Bother your metaphysics, Jasper! " was the
answer. " We are not going to let you go. ' We ' is

272 GOSLINGS

the majority of Marlow, not only the committee.
We'll fight the fanatics somehow."

The majority referred to by Elsie Durham was
fairly compact in relation to this issue of retaining
Jasper Thrale, and included the two greater of the
three recognizable parties in the community. Of
these three, the greatest was the moderate party,
made up of Episcopalians, Nonconformists and a
few Roman Catholics, who found relief for their
emotion one day in seven either in the Town Hall
or Marlow Church, in which places services and
meetings were held — the former by certain ap-
proved individuals, notably Elsie Durham and the
widow of the late Rector of Marlow. The second
party in order of size included all those who either
denied the Divine revelation or were careless of all
religious matters. The third party — the Jenkynites,
as they were dubbed by their opponents — had
drawn their numbers from every old denomination.
The Jenkynites were differentiated from the other
two parties by certain physical differences. For
instance, the Jenkynites numbered few members
under the age of thirty-five ; very few of them were
fat, and very few of them were capable field workers ;
they were hungry-eyed, and had a certain air of
disappointed eagerness about them; they looked as
though they had for ever sought something, and,
finding it, had remained unsatisfied. In all, there
were some seventeen women who might have been
regarded as quite true to type, and about this vivid
nucleus were clustered nearly a hundred other
women, many of whom exhibited some characteristic

MODES OF EXPRESSION 273

mark of the same type, while the remainder, perhaps
40 per cent of the whole body, had joined the party
out of bravado, to seek excitement, or for some pur-
pose of expediency.

Among the last was Mrs Isaacson, who was the
ultimate cause of the Jenkynite defeat.

Ever since she had passed her examination in farm
supervision, Mrs Isaacson had exhibited an increasing
tendency to rest on her laurels. She had grown very
stout again during her stay in Marlow, and com-
plained of severe heart trouble. The least exertion
brought on violent palpitation accompanied by the
most alarming symptoms. The poor lady would
gasp for breath, press her hands convulsively to a
spot just below her left breast, and roll up her eyes
till they presented only a terrifying repulsive rim
of blood-streaked white, if the least exertion were
demanded from her, and yet she would persist in the
effort until absolutely on the verge of collapse.
" No, no! I must work! " she would insist. " It iss
not fair to the others that I do no work. I will try
once more. It iss only fair."

At times they had to insist that she should return
home and rest.

And as the winter closed in, Mrs Isaacson's rests
became more and more protracted. Jasper Thrale
grinned and said : " I suppose we've got to keep her";
but there was a feeling among the other members
of the committee that they were creating an
undesirable precedent. Mrs Isaacson's example was
being followed by other women who preferred rest
to work.

274 GOSLINGS

Heart weakness was becoming endemic in Marlow.

Then came the news that Mrs Isaacson had joined
the Jenkynites. The seventeen received her some-
what doubtfully at first, but the body of the seel
were in favour of her reception. Possibly they were
rather proud of counting one more fat woman
among them ; the average member was so noticeably
thin.

Even the seventeen were satisfied within a
fortnight of Mrs Isaacson's conversion. She had a
wonderful fluency, and she said the right and proper
things in her own peculiar English — a form of
speech which had a certain piquancy and interest
and afforded relief and variety after the somewhat
stereotyped formulas of the seventeen.

But early in December, before the floods came,
Mrs Isaacson was convicted of a serious offence
against the community. One of the committee's
first works had been to store certain priceless
valuables. Tea, coffee, sugar, soap, candles, salt,
baking powder, wine and other irreplaceable com-
modities had been locked up in one of the bank
premises. In all, they had a fairly large store, upon
which they had hardly drawn as yet. It was not
intended to hoard these luxuries indefinitely.
After harvest a dole had been made to all the
workers as acknowledgment of their services, and it
had been decided to hold another festival on
Christmas Day.

Mrs Isaacson, with unsuspected energy, had
burglariously entered this storehouse of wealth.
She had found an accessible window at the rear,

MODES OF EXPRESSION 275

which she had succeeded in forcing, and, despite
her bulk and the delicate state of her heart, she had
effected an entrance and stolen tea, sugar, candles
and whisky.

She was, indeed, finally caught in the aft; but her
thefts would probably have escaped notice — she
worked after dark, and with a cunning and caution
that would have placed her high in the profession
before the plague — had it not been for Blanche.

IT seems that Mrs Isaacson had formed the habit of
staying up in the evening. She pleaded that she could
not sleep during the early hours of the night, which
was not surprising in view of the fact that she slept
much during the day; and as she was diligent in
picking up or begging sufficient wood to maintain
the fire, there was no reason why Blanche and
Millie should offer any objection. Thrale had rigged
up a dynamo at the mill now to provide artificial
light, and the girls' hours of work were so prolonged
that they were glad to get to bed at half-past seven
By eight o'clock Mrs Isaacson evidently counted
herself safe from all interruption.

She might have continued her enjoyment of
luxury undiscovered throughout the winter if
Blanche had not suffered from toothache.

She had been in bed and asleep nearly two hours
when her dreams of discomfort merged into a con-
sciousness of actual pain. She sighed and pressed her
cheek into the pillows, made agonizing exploration

T2

276 GOSLINGS

with her tongue, and tried to go to sleep again.
Possibly she might have succeeded had not that
unaccountable smell of whisky obtruded itself
upon her senses.

At first she thought the house was on fire. That
had always been her one fear in leaving Mrs
Isaacson alone; and she sat up in bed and sniffed
vigorously. " Funny," she murmured; " it smells
like — like plum pudding." The analogy was probably
suggested to her by the odour of burning brandy.

She got up and opened the door of the bedroom.

Mrs Isaacson slept on a sort of glorified landing,
and when Blanche stepped outside her own door
she could see at once by the light of a watery full
moon that her lodger had not yet come to bed.

The smell of the spirit was stronger on the landing,
and Blanche, forgetting her toothache in the
excitement of the moment, stole quietly down the
short flight of crooked stairs. The door giving on to
the living-room was latched, but there were two
convenient knot-holes, and through one of them
she saw Mrs Isaacson seated by the fire drinking hot
tea. On the table stood an open whisky bottle and
two lighted wax candles.

Blanche was thunderstruck. Tea, whisky and
candles were inexplicable things. The thought of
witchcraft obtruded itself, and so fascinated her
that she stood on the stairs gazing through the knot-
hole until a sudden rigour reminded her that she
was deadly cold.

She did not interrupt the orgy. She crept back
to bed, and after much difficulty awakened Millie.

MODES OF EXPRESSION 277

The sound of their voices must have alarmed Mrs
Isaacson, for the girls presently heard her stumbling
upstairs. They stopped their discussion then, and
Blanche's toothache being mysteriously cured by
her excitement, they were soon asleep again.

Neither of the girls spoke of their discovery to
anyone the next day, but Blanche returned to the
cottage at half -past four, when Mrs Isaacson was at
a meeting over the way, and explored her bedroom
She found a small store of tea, sugar and candles
under the mattress — the whisky bottle had disap-
peared— and so came to an understanding of Mrs
Isaacson's self-sacrificing insistence that she should
perform all work connected with her own sleeping-
place — it could hardly be called a room.

After consultation with Millie, Blanche decided
that she must inform Jasper Thrale of the contra-
band.

" She's been stealing, of course," he said. " I
suppose we shall have to bring it home to her." But
he laughed at Blanche's indignation.

" She's stealing from us! " said Blanche, who had
developed a fine sense of her duty towards and
interest in the community.

" Oh, yes ! you're quite right," said Thrale. " I'll
inform the committee — at least, the non-Jenkyn-
ites."

The five non-Jenkynites were furious.

" We must make an example," Elsie Durham
said. " It isn't that we shall miss what the Isaacson
woman has taken — or will take. It's the question of
precedent. This is where we are facing the beginning

278 GOSLINGS

of law — isn't it? Somebody has to protect the
members of the community against themselves. If
one steals and goes unpunished, another will steal
We shall have the women divided into stealers and
workers."

" What are you going to do with her? " asked
Thrale.

" Turn her out," replied Elsie Durham.

" The Jenkynites won't let her go," said Thrale
raising the larger question.

" We shall see," said Elsie Durham, " But that
reminds me that we must catch the woman
flagrant? delicto\ we must have no quibbles about
the fads."

Thrale agreed with the wisdom of this policy, but
refused to take any part in either the detection or
the prosecution of Mrs Isaacson. " They'll say its
a put-up job if I have anything to do with it," he
argued.

THE Jenkynites blazed when Rebecca Isaacson was
finally caught and denounced. The culprit, when
caught in the act of entering the bank premises
had made a slight error of judgment, and pleaded
the excuse that she was a sleepwalker and quite
unconscious of what she was doing; but she after-
wards adopted a sounder line of defence. She made
full confession to the seventeen, pleaded extravagant
penitence with all the necessary references to the
blood of the Lamb, and displayed all the well-

MODES OF EXPRESSION 279

known signs that she would become fervent in well-
doing after the ensanguined ablutions had been
metaphorically performed.

The Jenkynites were enraptured with so real a
case of sin. They had been compelled to content
themselves with so many minor failures from grace
that the performances were becoming slightly
monotonous.

The " Sister Rebecca " case was refreshingly real
and genuine, and they meant to make the most of
it. Also, this case gave them occasion to assert
themselves once more against the opinions of the
community.

It must not be supposed that the seventeen
deliberately adopted a practical and apparently
promising policy. They were not consciously seeking
to obtain civil power as were the priests of the old
days before the plague. The seventeen had no sense
of the State as represented by the community; they
were without question perfectly sincere in their
beliefs and actions. Their fault, if it can be so
described, was their inability to adapt themselves to
their conditions. They were as unchangeable as the
old lady who had died sooner than be permanently
separated from the glories of a house in Wisteria
Grove. She and the seventeen and many other
women in Marlow were demonstrating that rigidity
of opinion is detrimental to the interests of the
growing State. The same proposition had been
clearly demonstrated by a few exceptional indi-
viduals in the old days, but progress was so slow,
the property owners so content, and the average of

2&o GOSLINGS

mankind so intensely conservative, that their argu-
ments received no attention. For every man who
believed in the broad principle of maintaining an
open mind, there were ten thousand who were quite
incapable of putting the principle into practice.
With these women in Marlow the conditions were
completely changed. Moreover, women are by
nature more broad-minded than men in practical
affairs. Where intuition rather than the hard-
and-fast methods of an intellectual logic is being
brought into play, new and wonderful possibili-
ties of adaptation may enter the domain of
politics.

The Jenkynites and such individuals as the late
Mrs Gosling became suddenly conspicuous in the
new conditions. The type that they represent cannot
persist. They are the bonds on a vigorous and
increasing growth; the tree will grow and burst
away all inflexible restraints.

In Marlow the new and vigorous growth was the
sense of the community. The majority of the women
were realizing, consciously or unconsciously, that
they must work with and for each other. The
Jenkynite affair served the committee as a valuable
object-lesson.

Mrs Isaacson was free to do as she would while the
discussion raged. Imprisonment would have been
utterly futile. The committee did not wish to
punish her for her offence against common property,
they merely wished to rid themselves of an undesir-
able member and to make public announcement
that they would in like manner exclude any other

MODES OF EXPRESSION 28 1

member who proved herself a burden to the
community.

The Jenkynites were characteristically unable to
comprehend this argument. They had their own
definitions of heinous and venial sins, definitions
based on ancient precedent, and they counted the
fault of Millie Gosling in the former and that of
Rebecca Isaacson in the latter category. They were
not susceptible toargument.As they saw the problem,
no argument was admissible. They had the old law
and the old prophets on their side, and maintained
that what was true once was true for all time. In
their opinion, changed conditions did not affect
morality.

If the need for labour had been great, the affair
might have been shelved for a time as of less im-
portance than the dominant economic demand
which takes precedence of all other problems. But
although the floods had not yet come, there was not
enough work for all the members of the community,
and this comparative idleness readied upon the
importance of the Isaacson case in another and
probably more influential direction than the abstract
consideration of justice and humanity.

The women had time to talk, and a new and
fascinating subject was given them to discuss. And
they talked; and their talk ripened into action. The
affair Isaacson, which included also the affair
Jenkyns, was brought to a climax at a mass meeting
in the Town Hall.

It was decided, noisily, but with considerable
emphasis, that for the good of the community the

282 GOSLINGS

Jenkynites must go. The seventeen were specifically
indicated, but it was understood that certain of
their more advanced adherents would go with them.

The Jenkynites accepted the decision in the spirit
of their belief. They were martyrs in a great cause.
They would leave this accursed city (their termino-
logy was always Biblical) and cast off its dust from
their feet — although the roads were deep in mud
at the time. They would go forth to regenerate the
world, upheld by their love of truth and their zeal
for the Word.

Only Mrs Isaacson dissented, but she was com-
pelled to go with them.

They went forth in the rain, thirty-nine of them
in all, exalted with conscious righteousness and
faint with enthusiasm. The women of Marlow were
kind to them. They turned out and jeered the little
procession as it marched out of the town by the
Henley Road.

" 'Oo stole the tea? " was the most popular taunt,
and no doubt the exiles would have preferred that
the taunts should have been cast at their faith
rather than at the social misdemeanour of an obscure
convert. But any form of martyrdom was better
than none, and they held their heads high and sang
" Glory! glory! " with magnificent fervour.

" I'm sure we've done right," commented Elsie
Durham. " But we should never have had all the
women with us if there had been no offence against
property. That touched them — communal property.
I'm not sure that it isn't become almost dearer than
personal property."

XIX— ON THE FLOOD

FROM the middle of November onwards, the river
had been running nearly bank-high, and so much
power was available that Thrale had been considering
the possibility of lighting some of the nearer houses
by electricity. He had made three journeys to
London, and with half a dozen assistants he had
rifled two dynamos from the power station just
outside Paddington, and had brought back twenty
truck-loads of coal.

The dynamos, however, were still in the truck,
covered by tarpaulin. Thrale had decided that the
luxury of artificial lighting could not be provided
until all the grain had been thrashed and milled.
The end of that work was now in sight, and the
accumulated wealth of flour in Marlow was calcu-
lated to be sufficient to last the community for at
least twelve months. But before the lighting scheme
could be put in hand, a new trouble had threatened.

During the first week of December there was
almost continuous rain, and the river began to top
its banks, spreading itself over the meadowland
below the lock and creeping up the end of St
Peter's Street. No serious matter as yet, and a short
spell of frost and clear skies followed; but before
Christmas heavy rains came again, and Thrale
began to grow anxious.

283

284 GOSLINGS

" The weirs down-stream ought to be opened,"
he explained to Eileen. " They are probably all up;
we need never be afraid of shortage here; if we close
our own weir we can always hold up all the water we
want."

" Is it serious? " she asked.

" Not yet, but it may be," he said, looking up at
the sky. " All Marlow might be flooded."

And still the rain fell, and soon the girls
had to wade through a foot of water to reach the
mill.

" I must go down-stream and open all the weirs,"
Thrale announced on Christmas Eve. " I've been
looking at a steam launch over at the boat-house;
it's in quite good condition. I shall bring it up to the
town landing-stage to-morrow and get enough coal
and food aboard to last a week."

" You're not going alone? " said Eileen.

" No! I must take some one to work the engine
and the locks," returned Thrale.

" I'll come! " announced Eileen, with glee.

Thrale shook his head. " You'll have to run this
place," he said.

Since that night in September no reference had
been made by either of them to his strange revela-
tion of fear. They had worked together as two men
might have worked. Neither of them had exhibited
the least consciousness of sex. Thrale believed that
he had put the fear away from him, and Eileen was
content to wait. She was barely twenty.

" Blanche could run the mill," she suggested.
" There isn't much to do now."

ON THE FLOOD 285

Thrale turned away from her with a touch of
impatience. " Blanche had better come with me,"
he said.

" I want to come," pleaded Eileen.

"Why? "he asked.

" It'll be sport."

" I don't care to trust Blanche with the mill," he
persisted.

" She's every bit as good as I am," was her reply.

He shook his head.

" Oh, look here," said Eileen, " you might let me
come, or are you — are you afraid of — of what the
women will say? " She was standing by one of the
flour-encrusted mill windows and she began to
scratch a clean place on it with her nail.

Thrale did not answer for a moment and then he
came and stood near her. " What is it? " he asked.
" Are you sick of your work here? "

" I shouldn't mind a change," she said, intent on
enlarging her peep-hole.

" One forgets that you are women," said Thrale.
" I suppose women are never content with work
for work's sake."

" If you like," returned Eileen inconsequently. " I
can see out now. Why don't we have these windows
cleaned sometimes? "

" You can have them done while I'm away," he
suggested.

" I'm coming with you," said Eileen.

"Oh! you can come if you like," he said. He
thought he was perfectly safe, despite this unusual
display of femininity.

286 GOSLINGS

" You'll have to run the engine," he concluded.
" Oh! I'll run the engine," she agreed and looked
down at her capable, frankly dirty little hands.

THE weirs at Marlow and Hedsor had been roaring
open-mouthed for ten days before Thrale and Eileen
began their journey; but the water had been piling
up from below and the floods were working back up
river. The fact that none of the weirs above Henley
was closed had served to protect Marlow in some
degree. There were great floods above Sonning, and
from Goring to Culham the country was a vast
sheet of water. This water, however, only came
down comparatively slowly owing to the dammed
condition of the main channel, and a greater pro-
portion of it was absorbed. If the upper weirs had
been open, Marlow would have been under water by
the middle of December.

Not until the launch had been manoeuvred with
some difficulty through Boulter's Lock did Thrale
begin to realize the full significance of the situation.

He had had very great difficulty first in reaching
and second in raising the paddles of the Taplow
weir. In one place the force of the flood had broken
away the structure, but even with the relief this
passage had afforded the pressure of water on the
paddles was so great that he had been working for
more than two hours before the last valve was
opened.

ON THE FLOOD 287

Eileen had been waiting for him with the launch
warped up just below the lock where the force of
the stream was not so great.

" I don't know whether we shall be able to carry
out this job," remarked Thrale when he rejoined
her.

" Oh, but we must," she expostulated.

" Do you see what has happened? " he explained.
" All the water is piled up below us. We shall pro-
bably find the next locks flood-high, which means
that we sha'n't be able to open them."

" We must navigate," said Eileen. " Steam round
them; shoot the weirs."

" Oh, well," said Thrale, " I'm wondering how
far our responsibility goes. If we don't open the river
right down to Richmond, we shall only be increasing
the flood in the lower reaches, and there may be
women living there. After all, Marlow isn't the only
place on the river. And there is another thing; we
may never get back. It's a risky thing we are pro-
posing to do. No one could swim against this cur-
rent. If we were upset and carried into a weir, we
should be smashed to pieces in no time. Do you
think the community can spare us? "

" Bother the community! " replied Eileen.

The community and its activities were already
in the background of her mind. Marlow had receded
into a little distant place with which she was no
longer connected. The world of adventure and
romance lay open before her. She wanted only to
explore this turbulent river, widened now into a
miniature Amazon, from which arose the islands of

288 GOSLINGS

half-submerged houses and trees that composed
the strange archipelago of Maidenhead.

" Oh, well," said Thrale again. " We'll try. It's
no use waiting for the stream to go down. We'd
better go on now."

" Shall I cast off? " asked Eileen.

" Steady, steady," Thrale warned her. " The
next quarter of a mile is simply a rapid. You must
be ready to get the engines going full ahead the
moment we start, or I sha'n't be able to steer her.
And, now, we must both cast off together or we shall
be across the stream in two ticks. Just loosen the
rope round the cleats and let go, and then start the
engine. Let the loose end of the rope drag till we've
time to pick it up. Are you ready? All right — cast
off!"

The little launch swept out into the current with
a bound the instant she was released from her
moorings, and almost before the engines began to
revolve she was caught in the rapids that surged
down from the newly-opened weir. She was only a
light draught pleasure-boat, designed to navigate
the placid surface of the summer Thames, and
when she entered the curling broken water below
the island she threw up her nose and plunged like a
nervous mare.

" Full steam ahead," shouted Thrale at the toy
wheel. Eileen nodded, crouching over her little
engine; the roar of the stream had drowned Thrale's
voice, but she guessed his order.

Her eyes were bright with excitement. She had
no sense of fear. She was exhilarated by the sense

ON THE FLOOD 289

of rapid movement. The launch, indeed, was travel-
ling at a remarkable pace. In the narrow channel
between the islands and the town, the river must
have been running at nearly ten miles an hour, and
the engines were probably adding another eight. In
the wide spaces of the ocean eighteen miles an hour
may appear a safe and controllable speed, but this
little launch was running down hill, she could not
be stopped at command, and the restricted course
was beset with many and dangerous obstacles.

Thrale, handling the little brass wheel forward,
was conscious of uneasiness. The launch steered after
a fashion, but he had little control of her. The trees
on the banks appeared to be flying upstream at the
pace of an express train, and ahead of him was the
town bridge.

He decided instantly that they could not pass
under it, and put the wheel over, intending to
shoot out of the stream into the calm of the flood
water over the new open bank. But as the launch
turned and came across, the current took her stern
and turned her half round. For a moment her lee
rail was under water, and she trembled and rocked
on the verge of capsize. Then her engines drove her
out of the stream and she righted herself again and
began to cut through the almost still, shallow flood
water.

" Stop her! " roared Thrale.

" I say, what's up? " replied Eileen, coolly, as
she obeyed the order.

" No room to pass under the bridge," said Thrale.
" I suppose we'll have to navigate, as you call it.

u

290 GOSLINGS

Go dead slow, and be prepared to stop her at a
moment's notice."

They spent over an hour in finding a passage
round the approach to the bridge. They had
laboriously to pole the launch through the tops of
hedges, and in one place they were aground for
ten minutes. But after they had returned to the
stream once more they had a rapid and easy passage
down to Bray. They shot the great arch of the
Maidenhead railway bridge triumphantly. Eileen
said it was " glorious."

The weir at Bray proved even more difficult to
negotiate than the one above, and by the time it
was fully opened the dull December afternoon was
closing in.

They spent that night moored to two of the elms
that ring the isolated little church in the meadows
by Boveney.

" At this rate," remarked Thrale as they settled
themselves for the night, " it'll take us a week to
get to Richmond. We've done two weirs out of
thirteen, so far."

THRALE'S estimate proved excessive. They reached
Richmond on the fourth day out from Marlow,
having opened another nine weirs — the one at Old
Windsor had been swept away, and the one below
Richmond Bridge Thrale opened that afternoon.

During those four days they had seen few signs
of life. They had moved, keeping to the main stream

ON THE FLOOD 291

for the most part, in the midst of a wide expanse of
water; exploring a desolate and wasted country.

Once they had been hailed by three women, who
looked out at them from a house in Windsor, and
shouted something they did not catch; and a woman
had been standing on Staines Bridge as they
careered intrepidly through the centre arch — they
had no time even to distinguish her dress. But with
these exceptions they might have come through the
land of an extinct civilization, devoid of life; a land in
which deserted houses and church towers stood up
from the silver sheet of a vast lake, that was
threaded by this one impetuous torrent of swelling
river.

Richmond, also, was deserted. The emigrants had
passed on over the river or southwards to Petersham
and so into Surrey.

" Well! " said Eileen, wiping her oil-blackened
hands on a bunch of cotton waste, " that job's
done. We've fairly drawn the plug of the cistern
now. And how are we going to get back? "

" We'll find a couple of bicycles somewhere here,"
said Thrale.

It had been a clear day, and there was a suggestion
of frost in the air. The sun was setting very red and
full behind the bare trees across the river. Save for
the gurgle and hiss of the eddying flood, everything
was very still. The little launch which had served
them so well, and bore the marks of its great adven-
ture in broken rails and bruised sides, was run
aground by the side of the bridge. Thrale was stand-
ing in the road, but Eileen still sat by her engine.

U2

292 GOSLINGS

" I hate to leave the launch," she said, after a long
pause.

" We can come back and fetch her up when the
flood goes down," returned Thrale.

" We've done pretty well, the three of us."

" Yes, the three of us, he echoed."

" It has been great fun," sighed Eileen.

Thrale did not reply. He was thinking himself
back into the past. He saw a street in Melbourne
on a burning December evening, and the figure of a
gaily-clad little brunette who spoke purest cockney
and asked him why he looked so glum. " We ain't
goin' to a funeral," she had said. Yet afterwards he
had believed that something had been buried that
night. He had faced his own passion and the sight of
it had disgusted him. He had seen the shadow of a
demon who might master him, and he had grappled
with it; he believed that he had slain and buried lust
in Melbourne ten years ago. It had not risen up to
confront him when the plague had put a world of
women at his command. He had not been forced to
fight, he was not tempted — surely the thing was
dead and buried. Only once, on that warm Septem-
ber night, had he felt a sudden furious desire to take
this girl into his arms and fly with her into the woods.
The desire had come and gone, he was master of it,
and in any case it bore no resemblance to the brutal
thing he had faced in Melbourne.

Nor, as he stood now by Richmond Bridge watch-
ing the vault of the sky deepen to an intenser blue,
did the feeling that possessed him in any way resem-
ble that old cruel passion which had flared up and

ON THE FLOOD 293

died — surely it had died. He could not analyse
his feeling for this brave, clear-eyed companion,
who had faced with him all the dangers of the past
four days without a sign of fear. She had made no
advances to him, they were friends, she might have
been some delightfully clean, wholesome boy. And
then his thought was pierced and broken by a hor-
rible suggestion.

A picture of the hill to Handy Cross flashed before
him, and he saw a little lonely figure creeping fur-
tively away from Marlow. He drove his nails into his
palms and suddenly cried out.

"What's up?" said Eileen, turning round and
looking up at him. " Have you forgotten anything? "

He stepped into the boat and sat down beside her.
" I want to know — I must know," he said.

She looked at him and smiled. " All right, old
man, " she said. " Fire away."

" I told you once that I was frightened of you,"
said Thrale. " I want to know if you have ever been
frightened of yourself — or of me? "

" I could never be frightened of you," she replied,
and looked away towards the rising darkness of the
shadows across the hurrying river, " and I haven't
been afraid of myself — yet. I don't think "

" Wouldn't you be frightened of me if I picked
you up and ran shouting into the woods? " he asked,
fiercely.

Her eyes met his without reserve. "Dear old man,"
she said. " I should love it. I'm so glad you under-
stand. That was the one thing that prevented our
being real friends. I've wanted so much to be frank

294 GOSLINGS

and open with you. It's all these silly reserves that
make love abominable. Now we can be two jolly,
clean human beings who understand each other,
can't we? And we shall be such ripping good friends
always; quite open and honest with each other."

He drew a deep, sighing breath and put his arms
round her, drew her close to him and laid his face
against hers. " I've been such an awful ass," he said.
" I've always thought that love was unclean. I've
been like that Jenkyn woman. I've been prurient
and suspicious and evil-minded. I've been like the
people who cover up statues. But there was an excuse
for me — and for them, too. I didn't know, because
there was no woman like you to teach me. All the
women I've known have been secretive and sly.
They've fouled love for me by making it seem a
hidden, disreputable thing. Oh! we shall be ripping
good friends, little Eileen — magnificent friends."

" This is a jolly old boat, isn't it? " replied Eileen,
inconsequently. " Don't smother me, old man.
And, I say, do you think we'll be able to raid some
soap from somewhere? Do look at my hands! You
couldn't be friends with a chap who had hands like
that!"...

" There's one thing I'd like to remark," said
Eileen the next morning. There had been a frost
in the night, and there was every promise of an easy
ride back to Marlow.

"Yes?" said Thrale, examining the deflated
tyres of two bicycles they had chosen from a shop in
the High Street.

" We'd never have understood each other so well

ON THE FLOOD 295

if we hadn't worked together on the same job," said
Eileen.

" Well, of course not," returned Thrale. His tone
seemed to imply that she had stated a truth that
must always have been obvious to sensible people.

" That and there being no footle about mar-
riage," concluded Eileen.

A THIRD factor that had contributed to the perfec-
tion of that complete understanding was not realized
by either until they were descending the hill into
Bisham.

" I rather wish we weren't going back," said
Eileen. " Let's stop a moment. I want to talk.
We've never thought of what we're going to do."

" Do? " said Jasper, as he dismounted. " Well,
we've just got to make an announcement and that's
the end of it. The Jenkyns lot have all gone."

" It isn't the end, it's the beginning," replied
Eileen. " Don't you see that we can't even ex-
plain? "

" We sha'n't try."

" We shall. We shall have to — in a way. It'll take
years and years to do it. But the point is that they
won't understand, now, none of them, not even
Elsie Durham. We aren't free any longer."

" We aren't alone," she added, bringing the
hitherto unacknowledged factor into prominence.

Thrale frowned and looked up into the thin
brightness of the frosty sky. " Yes, I understand,"

296 GOSLINGS

he said. " It's public opinion that compels one to
regard love as shameful and secret. Alone together,
free from every suspicion, we hadn't a doubt. But
now, we have to explain and we can't explain, and
we are forced against our wills to wonder whether
we can be right and all the rest of the world wrong."

" We are right," put in Eileen.

" Only we can't prove it to anyone but ourselves."

" And we shouldn't want to, if we hadn't got to
live with them."

For a moment they looked at one another thought-
fully.

" No, we mustn't run away," Jasper said, with
determination, after a pause. " Look, the flood has
begun to go down already. That's our work. There's
other work for us to do yet."

For a time they were silent, looking down on to
Marlow and out over the valley.

" We didn't go over that hill," said Eileen, at last,
pointing to the distant rise of Handy Cross.

" No," replied Jasper, and then, " we won't
hide behind hills. Damn public opinion."

" Oh, yes, damn public opinion," agreed Eileen.
" But we won't stay in Marlow always."

XX— THE TERRORS OF SPRING

THE frost gave way on the third night, and for ten
days there was a spell of mild weather with some
rain. Carrie Oliver began to contemplate the pos-
sibility of getting forward with such ploughing as
still remained to be done. She proposed to have an
increased acreage of arable that year, and less pas-
ture, less hay and less turnips; the arable was to
include potatoes, beans and peas. For the com-
munity was rapidly tending towards vegetarianism.
They had no butcher in Marlow, and the women
revolted against the slaughter of cattle and sheep.
They were hesitating and clumsy in the attack, and
so inflicted wounds which were not fatal, they turned
sick at the sight of the brute's agonies and at the
appalling spurts of blood, and finally when the
animal was at last mercifully dead, they bungled the
dissection of the carcase.

" I'd sooner starve than do it again," was the
invariable decision pronounced by any new volun-
teer who had heroically offered to provide Marlow
with meat, and even Carrie Oliver admitted that it
was a " beastly dirty job."

" Only," she added " we'll 'ave to go on breeding
297

298 GOSLINGS

calves or we won't get no milk, an' what are we
goin' to do with the bullocks? "

The committee wondered if some form of barter
might not be introduced. Wycombe and Henley
might have something to offer in exchange, or, fail-
ing that, might be urged to accept these superfluous
beasts as a present, returning the skins and horns,
for which there might be a use in the near future.
Sheep must be reared for their wool — the clothes
of the community would not last for ever. The sub-
jects of tanning and weaving were being studied by
certain members of the now enlarged committee.
Neither operation presented insuperable difficul-
ties.

Now that a certain supply of food was provided
for, the community was already turning its energy
towards the industries. Many schemes were being
planned and debated. Marlow was well situated,
with such abundance of water and wood at its gates;
and the question of attracting desirable immigrants
had been raised.

Time was afforded for the consideration of all
these schemes by the great frost which began on
New Year's Day and lasted until the end of February.

The frost came first from the south-west, and for
three days the country was changed into a fairy
world built of sharp white crystals, a world that was
seen dimly through a magic veil of mist. Then fol-
lowed a black and bitter wind from the north-east,
that bought a thin and driving snow, and when the
wind fell the country was locked in an iron shell that
was not relaxed for six weeks.

THE TERRORS OF SPRING 299

The flood had nearly subsided before the first
frost came, but the river was still high, and presently
the water came down laden with ice-floes, that
jammed against the weir and the mill, and formed
a sheet of ice that gradually crept back towards the
bridge.

All field and mill work was stopped, and Thrale
and Eileen spent two or three days a week making
excursions to London, bringing back coal and other
forms of riches.

THEIR fear of being misunderstood had proved to
have been an exaggeration. In that exalted mood of
theirs, which had risen to such heights, after four
days of adventurous solitude, they had come a little
too near the stars. In finding themselves they had
lost touch with the world.

Elsie Durham had smiled at their defensive an-
nouncement.

" My dear children," she had said, " don't be
touchy about it. I am so glad; and, of course, I've
known for months that you would come to an
understanding. And there's no need to tell me
that your — agreement, did you say? — was entirely
different to any other. I know. But be human about
it. Don't apologize for it by being superior to all of
us."

" Oh, you're a dear," Eileen had said enthu-
siastically.

Nevertheless there were many women still left in

300 GOSLINGS

Marlow who were less spiritually-minded than Elsie
Durham. Comparative idleness induced gossip, and
there was more than one party in the community
which regarded Thrale and Eileen with disfavour.

The old ruts had been worn too deep to be
smoothed out in a few months, however heavy had
been the great roller of necessity. And, strangely
enough, the life of Sam Evans at High Wycombe
was regarded by many of the more bigoted with less
displeasure than this perfectly wholesome and de-
sirable union of Thrale and Eileen. The prostitu-
tion of Sam Evans was a new thing outside the
experience of these women, and it was accepted as
an outcome of the new conditions. The other affair
was familiar in its associations, and was condemned
on both the old and the new precedents.

The mass of the women were quite unable to
think out a new morality for themselves. , . .

RELIEF from all these foolish criticisms, gossipings and
false emotions came when the frost broke. A warm
rain in the first week of March released the soil
from its bonds, and as the retarded spring began to
move impatiently into life there was a great call for
labour.

But as the year ripened the temperament of the
community exhibited a new and alarming symptom.

There was a terrible spirit of depression abroad.

All Nature was warm with the movement of repro-
duction. Nature was growing and propagating,

THE TERRORS OF SPRING 301

thrusting out and taking a larger hold upon life.
Nature was coming to the fight with new reserves
and allies, a fruitful and increasing army, eager for
the struggle against this little decreasing band of
sterile humanity. Nature was prolific and these
women were barren.

And in some inexplicable way the consciousness
of futility had spread through the Marlow com-
munity. Some posthumous children had been born
since the plague, a few young girls — Millie among
them — were pregnant, but death had been busier
than life during the winter, and from outside came
stray reports that in other communities death
had been busier still.

What hope was there for that generation? They
were too few to cope with their task. Grass was
growing in their streets, their houses were in need
of repair, and after their day's labour in the fields
to provide themselves with food, they had neither
strength nor inclination to take up the battle anew.

Moreover, the spice was gone from life. Some
inherent need for emulation was gone. They were
ceasing to take any pride in their persons, and in
their clothes. They wore knickerbockers or trousers
for convenience in working, and suffered a strange
loss of self-esteem in consequence. Many of the
younger women still returned in the evenings to
what skirts and ribbons they still possessed, but the
habit was declining. The uselessness of it was grow-
ing even more apparent. There were no sex dis-
tinctions or class distinctions among them. Of what
account was it that one girl was prettier or better

302 GOSLINGS

dressed than her neighbour? What mattered was
whether she was a stronger or more intelligent
worker.

Above all, the woman's need for love and admira-
tion could find no outlet. They realized that they
were becoming hardened and unsexed, and revolted
against the coming change. Something within them
rose up and cried for expression, and when it was
thwarted it turned to a thing of evil. . . .

The mind of the community was becoming dis-
torted. Hysteria, sexual perversions, and various
forms of religious mania were rife. Young women
broke into futile and unsatisfying orgies of foolish
dancing, and middle-aged women became absorbed
in the contemplation of a male and human god.

Even the committee did not escape the influence
of the growing despair. They looked forward to a
future when such machines and tools as they pos-
sessed would be worn out, and they had no means of
replacing them.

Thrale had reported that the line to London
was becoming unsafe for the passage of his trucks.
Rust was at work upon the rails; rain and floods had
weakened embankments; young growths were spring-
ing up on the permanent way, and it was hopeless
to contemplate any work of repair. In the old days an
army of men had been needed for that work alone.
The country roads needed re-metalling, and the
houses restoration; they had not the means or the
labour to undertake half the necessary work. There
were breaches in the river bank and a large and appa-
rently permanent lake was forming in the low

THE TERRORS OF SPRING 303

meadows towards Bourne End. All about them
Nature was so intensely busy in her own regardless
way, and they were helpless, now, to oppose her.

The age of iron and machinery was falling into a
swift decline. All that the community could look
for in the future was a return to primitive con-
ditions and the fight for bare life. Every year their
tools and machines would grow less efficient, every
year Nature would return more powerful to the
attack. In ten years they would be fighting her with
rude and tedious weapons of wood, grinding their
scanty corn between two stones, and living from hand
to mouth. In the bountiful South such a life might
have its rewards, but how could they endure it in
this uncertain and cruel North?

So while the sun rose higher in the sky and the
earth was wonderfully reclothed, the women of
Marlow fell deeper and deeper into the horrors of
mental depression. What had they to work for, and
to hope for, save this miserable possession of un-
satisfied life?

XXI— SMOKE

ONE bright morning, at the end of April, Jasper and
Eileen sat on the cliffs at the Land's End and talked
of the future.

Ten days before, they had left Marlow on bicycles
to make exploration. They intended to return; they
had explained they would be away for a month at
the outside, but in view of the growing depression
and the loss of spirit shown by the community, they
considered it necessary to go out and discover what
conditions obtained in other parts of England. It
might be, they urged, that the plague had been less
deadly in other districts.

" We should not know, here," Jasper had argued.
" There may be many men left elsewhere; but they
might not have been able to communicate with us
yet. Their attention, like ours, would have been con-
centrated upon local conditions for a time. Eileen
and I will find out. Perhaps we may be able to open
up communication again. In any case we'll come
back within a month and report."

His natural instinct had taken him into the West
Country.

They had left Elsie Durham slightly more cheer-

304

SMOKE 305

ful. They had given her a gleam of hope, given her
something, at last, to which she might look forward.

Their own hopes had quickly faded and died as
they rode on into the West. By the time they reached
Plymouth they were thinking of Marlow as a place
peculiarly favoured by Providence.

At first they had passed through communities
conducted on lines resembling their own, greater or
smaller groups of women working more or less in
co-operation. In many of these communities a single
man was living — in some cases two men — who
viewed their duty towards society in the same light
as the Adonis of Wycombe.

But the unit grew steadily smaller as they pro-
gressed. It was no longer the town or village com-
munity but the farm which was the centre of activity,
and the occupied farms grew more scattered. For it
appeared that here in the West the plague had at-
tacked women as well as men. Another curious fact
they learned was that the men had taken longer to
die. One woman spoke of having nursed her husband
for two months before the paralysis proved fatal. . . .

And if the depression in Marlow had been great,
the travellers soon learned that elsewhere it was
greater still. The women worked mechanically,
drudgingly. They spoke in low, melancholy voices
when they were questioned, and save for a faint
accession of interest in Thrale's presence there, and
the signs of some feeble flicker of hope as they asked of
conditions further north and east, they appeared to
have no thought beyond the instant necessity of sus-
taining the life to which they clung so feebly.

306 GOSLINGS

Thrale and Eileen rode on into Cornwall, not
because they still hoped, but because they both felt
a vivid desire to reach the Land's End and gaze out
over the Atlantic. They wanted to leave this deso-
late land behind them for a few hours, and rest their
minds in the presence of the unchangeable sea.

" Let us go on and forget for a few days," Eileen
had said, and so they had at last reached the furthest
limit of land.

Cornwall had proved to be a land of the dead.
Save for a few women in the neighbourhood of
St Austell, they had not seen a living human being
in the whole county.

And so, on this clear April morning, they sat
upon this ultimate cliff and talked of the future.

THE water below them was delicately flecked with
white. No long rollers were riding in from the Atlan-
tic, but the fresh April breeze was flicking the crests
of little waves into foam; and, above, an ever-
renewed drift of scattered white clouds threw coursing
shadows upon the blues and purples of the curdling
sea.

Eileen and Thrale had walked southwards as far
as Cam Voel to avoid the obstruction to vision of
the Longships, and on three sides they looked out to
an unbroken horizon of water, which on that bright
morning was clearly differentiated from the impend-
ing sky.

SMOKE 307

" One might forget — here," remarked Eileen, after
a long silence.

" If it were better to forget," said Jasper.

Eileen drew up her knees until she could rest her
chin upon them, embracing them with her arms.
" What can one do? " she asked. " What good is it
all, if there is no future? "

" Just to live out one's own life in the best way,"
was the answer.

She frowned over that for a time. " Do you really
believe, dear," she said, when she had considered
Jasper's suggestion, " do you really believe that this
is the end of humanity? "

" I don't know," he said. " I have changed my
mind half a dozen times in the last few days. There
may be a race untouched somewhere — in the archi-
pelagos of the South Seas, perhaps — which will
gradually develop and repeople the world again."

" Or in Australia, or New Zealand," she prompted.

" We should have heard from them before this,"
he said. " We must have heard before this."

" And is there no hope for us, here in England, in
Marlow? There are a few boys — infants born since
the plague, you know — and there will be more
children in the future — Evans's children and those
others. There were two men in some places, you
remember."

" Can they ever grow up? It seems to me that the
women are dying. They've nothing to live for. It's
only a year since the plague first came, and look at
them now. What will they be like in five years' time?
They'll die of hopelessness, or commit suicide, or

X2

308 GOSLINGS

simply starve from the lack of any purpose in living,
because work isn't worth while. And the others, the
mothers, that have some object in living, will fall
back into savagery. They'll be so occupied in the
necessity for work, for forcing a living out of the
ground somehow, that they'll have neither time nor
wish to teach their children. I don't know, but it
seems to me that we are faced with decrease, gra-
dually leading on to extinction.

" And I doubt," he continued, after a little hesi-
tation, " I doubt whether these sons of the new
conditions will have much vitality. They are the
children of lust on the father's side, worse still, of
tired lust. It does make a difference. Perhaps if we
were a young and vigorous people like the old Jews
the seed would be strong enough to override any
inherent weakness. But we are not, we are an old
civilization. Before the plague, we had come to a
consideration of eugenics. It had been forced upon
us. A vital and growing people does not spend its
time on such a question as that. Eugenics was a
proposition that grew out of the necessity of the
time. It was easy enough to deny decadence, and to
prove our fitness by apparently sound argument,
but, to me, it always seemed that this growing de-
mand for some form of artificial selection of parents,
by restriction of the palpably unfit, afforded the
surest evidence. Things like that are only produced
if there is a need for them. Eugenics was a symp-
tom."

Eileen sighed. " And what about us? " she asked.

" We're happy," replied Jasper. " Probably the

SMOKE 309

happiest people in the world at the present time. And
we must try to give some of our happiness to others.
We must go back to Marlow and work for the com-
munity. And I think we'll try in our limited way to
do something for the younger generation. Perhaps,
it might be possible for us to go north and try our
hands at making steel, there are probably women
there who would help us. But I don't think it's
worth while, unless to preserve our knowledge and
hand it on. We can only lessen the difficulty in one
little district for a time. As the pressure of necessity
grows, as it must grow, we shall be forced to aban-
don manufacture. The need for food will outrun
us. We are too few, and it will be simpler and per-
haps quicker to plough with a wooden plough than to
wait for our faulty and slowly-produced steel. The
adult population, small as it is, must decrease, and
I'm afraid it will decrease more rapidly than we
anticipate, owing to these causes of depression and
lack of stimulus. ..."

" Oh, well," said Eileen at last, getting to her
feet, " we're happy, as you say, and our job seems
pretty plain before us. To-morrow, I suppose, we
ought to be getting back, though I hate taking the
news to Elsie."

Jasper came and stood beside her, and put his
arm across her shoulders. " We, at any rate, must
keep our spirits up," he said. " That, before every-
thing."

" I'm all right," said Eileen, brightly. " I've got
you and, for the moment, the sea. We'll come back
here sometimes, if the roads don't get too bad."

3io GOSLINGS

" Yes, if the roads don't get too bad."

" And, already, the briars are creeping across the

road from hedge to hedge. The forest is coming

back."

" The forest and the wild."

He drew her a little closer and they stood looking

out towards the horizon.

IN the south-west the clear line had been wiped out
and what looked like mist was sweeping towards
them.

"There's a shower coming," said Thrale.

They stood quietly and let the sharp spatter of
rain beat in their faces, and then the shadow of the
storm moved on and the horizon line was clear again.

" That's a queer cloud out there," said Eileen.
" Is it another shower? "

She pointed to a tiny blur on the far rim of the
sea.

" It is queer," said Thrale. " It's so precisely like
the smoke of a steamer."

For a few seconds they gazed in intent silence.

" It's getting bigger," broke out Eileen, suddenly
excited. " What is it, Jasper? "

" I don't know. I can't make it out," he said. He
moved away from her and shaded his eyes from the
glare of the momentarily cloudless sky.

" I can't make it out," he repeated mechanically.

The blur was widening into a grey-black smudge,
into a vaguely diffused smear with a darker centre.

SMOKE 311

" With the wind blowing towards us " said

Jasper, and broke off.

" Yes, yes — what? " asked Eileen, and then as he
did not answer, she gripped his arm and repeated
importunately. "What? Jasper, what? With the
wind blowing towards us? "

" By God it is," he said in a low voice, disregarding
her question. " By God it *V," he repeated, and then
a third time, " It is."

" Oh! what, what? Do answer me! I can't see! "
pleaded Eileen.

But still he did not answer. He stood like a rock
and stared without wavering at the growing cloud
on the horizon.

And then the cloud began to grow more diffused,
to die away, and Eileen could see tiny indentations
on the sky line, indentations which pushed up and
presently revealed themselves as attached to a little
black speck in the remotest distance.

" Oh, Jasper! " she cried, and her eyes filled with
inexplicable tears, so that she could see only a misty
field of troubled blue.

" It's a liner," said Jasper at last, turning to her.
He looked puzzled and his eyes stared through her.
" And its coming from America. Do you suppose
the American women "

The boat was revealed now. They could see the
shape of her, the high deck, the two tall funnels and
the three masts. She was passing across, fifteen miles
or so to the south GA them, making up Channel.

For a moment they felt like shipwrecked sailors
on a lonely island, who see a vessel pass beyond hail.

312 GOSLINGS

" Oh, Jasper, what can it be? " Eileen besought
him.

" It's a White Star boat," he said, and he still
spoke as if his mind was far away. " Is it possible,
is it anyway possible that America has survived? Is
it possible that there is traffic between America and
Europe, and that they pass us by for fear of infection?
How do we know that vessels haven't been passing
up the Channel for months past? Why should we
think that this is the first? "

" It is the first," proclaimed Eileen. " I feel it.
Oh, let us hurry. Let us ride and ride as fast as we
can to Plymouth or Southampton. I know they'll
be coming to Plymouth or Southampton. Men,
Jasper, men! No women would dare to run a boat
at that pace. See how fast she is going. Oh hurry,
hurry! "

He caught fire then. They ran back to find their
bicycles. They ran, and presently they rode in silence,
with fierce intensity. They rode at first as if they had
but ten miles to go, and the lives of all the women
in England depended upon their speed.

And though they slackened after the first few
miles they still rode on with such eager determina-
tion that they reached Plymouth at sunset.

But they could see no sign of the liner in the waters
about Plymouth. They saw only the deserted hulks
of a hundred vessels that had ridden there untouched
for twelve months, futile battleships and destroyers
among them; great, venomous, useless things that
had become void of all meaning in the struggle of
humanity.

SMOKE 313

" It's not here. Let's go on! " said Eileen.

Jasper shrugged his shoulders. " It's well over a
hundred miles to Southampton," he said. " Nearer
a hundred and fifty, I should say."

" But we must go on, we must," urged Eileen.

It was evident that Jasper, too, felt a compelling
desire to go on. He stood still with a look of intense
concentration on his face. Eileen had seen him look
thus, when he had been momentarily frustrated by
some problem of mill machinery. She waited expect-
ant for the solution she was sure would presently
emerge.

" A motor," he said, speaking in short disconnected
sentences. " If we can find paraffin and petrol and
candles — light of some sort. The engines wouldn't
rust, but they'd clog. It must be paraffin. We
daren't clean with petrol by artificial light. It's
possible. Let's try. ..."

That night Jasper did not sleep, but Eileen, as
she sat beside him in the softly moving motor, soon
lost consciousness of the dim streak of road and black
river of hedge. The moon, in her third quarter, had
risen before midnight, and when they started was
riding deep in the sky, half veiled by a vast wing of
dappled cirrus. And that, too, merged into her dream.
She thought she was driving out into the open sea
in a ship which became miraculously winged and
soared up towards an ever-approaching but unin-
creasing moon. She woke with a start to find that
it was broad daylight and that a thin misty rain
was coming up from the sea.

3H GOSLINGS

" The Solent," said Jasper, pointing to a distant
gleam below them.

On the common they stopped and stood up in the
car, watching a distant smear of smoke that stained
the thin mist.

" She'll be coming up Southampton Water with
the lead going," said Jasper, trying desperately to
be calm.

EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

THE GREAT PLAN

ON the evening of that day Jasper and Eileen dined
on board the " Bombastic," that latest development
of the old trans-Atlantic competition in shipbuilding,
the boat that had made her first journey to New York
carrying fugitives from England in the days when
the threat of the plague grew hourly more imminent.
The " Bombastic " had not justified her name, she
had fled from Southampton without ceremony, and
she had not returned for over a year. The " Apolo-
getic " would have been more apt.

And on this evening of her return, the demeanour
of that crowd of quiet serious men in the huge over-
decorated saloon, gave no hint of bombast. As they
listened intently to the rapid story of their two travel-
stained and somewhat ragged guests, there was no
hint of brag or boast among them all. They came
not as conquerors but as friends.

" But oh, it's your story we want to hear," broke
in Eileen at last.

She had been strangely quiet so far, she had be-
come suddenly conscious of the defects of her dress.
The old associations were swarming about her.
Eighteen months ago she had sat in just such another
saloon as this, courted and flattered, the daughter

317

318 GOSLINGS

of a great aristocrat, a creature on a remote and
gorgeous pedestal. Now it seemed that she was
neither greater nor less than any man present. She
was one of them, not set apart. She looked down at
her hands, still oil-stained by her struggles with the
motor on the previous night.

Jasper had been more patient. He was not less
eager than Eileen to hear the explanation of this
wonderful visit, of the resurrection of these twelve
hundred men from a dead and silent world. But he
had restrained his impatience and told his story
first. He knew that so he would be more quickly
satisfied. He would be able to listen to men who were
not tense with an anxiety to ask questions.

They were sitting now at one end of a long table
in the saloon, after eating a meal that had provided
once more the longed-for satisfaction of salt.

" Well," said an American at the head of the table,
turning to Eileen in answer to her protest, " we've
maybe been selfish in putting all these questions
but we're looking ahead. We aren't forgetting
that we've a big work to do."

" But how did you get here? " asked Eileen
impetuously. " How is it that you're all alive? "

" Well, as to that, you'd better ask the doctor,
there," replied the American. " He's a countryman
of yours, and he's been in the thick of it and knows
the life story of that plague microbe like the history
of England."

The doctor, a bearded, grave-eyed man, looked
up and smiled.

" Hardly that," he said. " We shall never know

THE GREAT PLAN 319

now, I hope, the history of the plague organism.
It was never studied under the microscope — we
were too busy — and now we trust that the bacillus —
if it were a bacillus — has encompassed its own
destruction. What interests you, however, is that
this sudden, miraculously sudden, development of
its deadly power as regards humanity ran through a
determinable cycle of evolution. From what you've
told us, already, it seems clear, I think, that even in
England the bacillus was losing what I may call its
effectiveness. The men in the West Country you've
described, probably died from starvation and neglect."

He paused for a moment and then continued:
" Now in America both men and women were
attacked. There was certainly a greater percentage
of male cases, but I suppose something like half the
female population was infected as well. As far as one
can judge the bacillus was simply losing power. But
for all we know it may have developed, it may be
entering on a new stage of evolution, and in some
apparently haphazard way now be beneficial to
man instead of deadly. Such things may be happen-
ing every day below the reach of our knowledge.
The little world is hidden from us, even as the great
world is hidden. . . .

" However," he went on more briskly, " the
thing we do know is that the symptoms of the new
plague in America differed materially from our
expectation of them, gathered from the accounts
that had reached us from the Old World. In England
the paralysis lasted, 1 believe, some forty-eight
hours and ended in death. In America the paralysis

320 GOSLINGS

rarely ended fatally, but it lasted in some cases for
six months. * Paresis,' we called it. The patient was
perfectly conscious but practically unable to move
hand or foot."

" That paresis gave us time to do some very clear
and consecutive thinking, I may remark," put in
an American. " I had four months to study my ideas
of life."

The doctor nodded thoughtfully. " America is
no less changed than England," he said, " but it is
another change. Well, you understand that we did
not all get the plague over there; the thing was less
deadly in attack and about ten per cent of us were
left to look after the patients."

" And find food," interpolated one of the listeners.

" That was a time we won't ever forget," agreed
another.

" Sure thing," said some one,and a general murmur
of assent ran round the table.

" And all the machines were idle, of course,"
continued the doctor, " and even when the tide of
recovery began to flow we had to turn our attention
first to the getting of food."

" If it hadn't been for that we'd have been here
before this," said a young man. " I feel we owe
England and Europe some kind of an apology, but
we just had to get busy on food growing right away.
We couldn't spare a ship's crew till three weeks
ago."

" And the others are hard at it over there still,"
put in another. " This is just a pioneer party."

" It's all so comprehensible now," said Thrale

THE GREAT PLAN 321

after a silence, " but we had no idea,we never thought
there could be any one living in America. We
thought that somehow we must have heard. One
forgets ..."

" We tried to .get on to you," said one of the
party, " by cable and wireless. We kept on tapping
away for months, but we got no reply. We thought
you must be all dead too."

" Well, we guessed you were having a real bad
time anyway," amended another. " You see we knew
the way that plague had taken Europe but we kept

hoping and trying to get on to you all the same."
******

" We've got a message for Elsie, after all," Eileen
said to Jasper the next day. " There's hope for us
yet."

" Yes, there's hope," said Jasper.

They had been up at the town railway station
assisting a party of Americans to investigate the
condition of the rolling stock and the permanent
way. Neither could be pronounced satisfactory. A
few women had come in from the neighbouring
country that morning attracted by the sight of an
inexplicable pillar of smoke, and their report of
local conditions had been equally uninspiring. They
had spoken of famine and failure, but their faces
had been lit by a new brightness at the sight of this
miraculous little army of men. There had been hope
in the faces and bearing of these toil-worn women,
faith in the promise of support and succour.

Now Jasper and Eileen stood looking down
towards the harbour. The tide was creeping in to

Y

322 GOSLINGS

efface the repulsive ugliness of the mud flats, and
the sluggish water rippled faintly against the foul
sloping sides of small boats that had lain anchored
there for more than twelve months. Behind them,
across the line, was a row of unsightly houses, hung
with weather-slating.

" Oh, there's hope," repeated Jasper.

He was thinking of all the work that lay before
them, and yet he had faith that a new and better
civilization would arise. " We must get things
going again," had been the Americans' phrase,
and they apparently faced the future without a
qualm.

But Jasper's mind was perplexed with the detail
of the mechanical work that must be faced, detail
so intricate and confused that he was bewildered by
its complexity. It appeared to him that the crux
of the whole problem lay in the North, in the
counties of coal and iron. Coal and steel were the
first essentials, he thought. They must begin there
in however small a way, and America must send
out more men, continually more men. To-morrow
he was going back in the motor, with two experts,
to the cable hut in Sennen Cove. They were going
to test the cable and hoped to re-establish com-
munication with America, and then more ships
would come and more men, ever more men.

And, even so, they could do little at first, and
beyond lay the whole of Europe and still further
the whole of Asia. Were women there, also, maintain-
ing the terrible fight against Nature in the awful
struggle to find food? Steel and coal we must have,

THE GREAT PLAN 323

was the burden of his thought, and in his imagina-
tion he pictured the waking of factories and mines,
he had a vision of little engines running. . . .

Eileen's thought had flown ahead. With one
magnificent leap she had passed from the contempla-
tion of present necessity to a realization of the dim
future. And her thought found words.

" Hope, lots of hope," she said. " Hope of a new
clean world. We've got such a chance to begin all
over again, and do it better. No more sweated labour,
Jasper, and no more living on the work of others.
We've just got to pull together and work for each
other. If we can get enough food, and we can now
with all these dear men come to help us, we can do
such wonderful things afterwards. There'll be lots
of children growing up in a few years' time, and we
shall teach them the things we've had to learn by
the force of necessity. They'll begin so differently
because, although we have had the experience of all
history, we sha'n't be bound by all the foolish con-
ventions that grew out of it. Such a silly incongruous
growth, wasn't it? But I suppose it couldn't be
helped in one way. We were so penned in. We all
had our rotten little places to keep and that took all
our time. We never had a chance to consider the
broad issues, the real fundamental things. But you've
got to consider the fundamental things when you
start clean away from a new beginning.

" And, oh ! Jasper, surely we have all learnt certain
things to avoid, haven't we? I mean class distinctions
and sex distinctions, and things like that. Women
won't trouble any more about titles and all that rot

324 GOSLINGS

now, and anyway there aren't any left to trouble
about. And social conditions will be so different
now that there won't be any more marriage.
Marriage was a man's prerogative; he wanted to
keep his woman to himself, and keep his property for
his children. It never really protected women, and
anyway they were capable of protecting themselves
if they'd been given a chance. I know the children
were a difficulty in the old days, but they won't be
now. It'll be everybody's business to see that the
children get looked after, and a woman won't starve
just because she hasn't got a husband to keep her.
She'll get better wages than that. The women who
have children will be the most precious things we
shall have. They'll live healthier lives, too, and they
won't be incapacitated as they used to be. They'll
work and be strong instead of spending all their
time either in doing nothing or pottering about the
house in an eternal round of cleaning the stupid,
ugly things we used. We shall have to have all new
houses, Jasper, when we get things going again.

" Oh, it will be splendid," she broke out in a great
burst of enthusiasm, " and we begin to-day. We
have begun."

Jasper nodded. " It's a wonderful opportunity,"
he said.

" Wonderful, wonderful," repeated Eileen. " We
all, men and women, start level again. Equality,
Jasper, It's a beautiful word — Equality. Of course I
know how unequal we all are from one point of
view, and there must come a sort of aristocracy of
intellect and efficiency. But underneath there will

THE GREAT PLAN 325

be a true equality for all that, and we shall see to it
that no man or woman can abuse their powers by
making slaves again. What a world of slaves it used
to be, and we weren't even slaves to intellect and
efficiency, only to wealth and to money, and to
some foolish idea of position and power."

" Well, we've got our work to do, here and now,"
said Jasper after a long pause.

" Work? Of course, and I love it," returned
Eileen, " and while we work we've got to think and
teach."

The tide was coming in steadily, and near them
an old boat that had been lying on the mud was now
afloat once more and had taken on some of its old
dignity.

Eileen pointed to it. " We're afloat again," she
remarked.

" Embarked on the greatest plan the world has
ever known," added Jasper.

" Oh, it's all part of the great plan," concluded
Eileen.

THE END

UETBHVQKtH

A LIST OF

CURRENT FICTION

PUBLISHED BY

WILLIAM HEINEMANN

AT 21 BEDFORD ST., LONDON, W.G.

MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION
Now in its 1 3th Edition.

THE DOP DOCTOR

by RICHARD DEHAN 6/-

Author of "Between Two Thieves."

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real. The cruelty of battle, the depth of disgusting
villainy, the struggles of great souls, the irony of coinci-
dence are all in its pages. . . Who touches this book
touches a man. I am grateful for the wonderful thrills
' The Dop Doctor ' has given me. It is a novel among a
thousand."— The Daily gxpress.

JUGGERNAUT

by E. F. BENSON 6/-

"A masterly analysis. He is wonderfully successful with
the prig Arnild Leveson, for in spite of his amazing
egoism, Mr. Benson makes him quite a human being, and

even a lovable human being In 'Juggernaut'

Mr. E. F. Benson has given us an admirable example of
his powers of intimate psychology." — Westminster Gazette.

Author of

* ACCOUNT RENDERED *TH E LUCK OF THE VAILS

AN ACT IN A BACKWATER *MAMMON & CO.

*THE ANGEL OF PAIN *PAUL

*THE BOOK OF MONTHS THE PRINCESS SOPHIA

*THE CHALLONERS *A REAPING

*THE CLIMBER THE RELENTLESS CITY

THE HOUSE OF DEFENCE *SCARLET AND HYSSOP

THE IMAGE IN THE SAND *SHEAVES
Each Cm. 8vo. Price 6/-.

Those volumes marked * can also be obtained in the Two Shilling

net Edition (Heinemann's Two Shilling Novels), uniformly bound,

with coloured picture wrapper and frontispiece, and also the

following volumes

THE OSBORNES THE VINTAGE DODO

%* "The Book of Months "and "A Reaping" form one volume
in this Edition.

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MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

HE WHO PASSED

To M. L. G. (Anon.) @/_

"As a story, it is one of the most enthralling I have read
for a long time ... Six— seven o'clock struck— half-
past-seven — and yet this extraordinary narrative of a
woman's life held me absolutely enthralled ... I forgot
the weather ; I forgot my own grievances ; I forgot every-
thing, in fact, under the spell of this wonderful book.
.... In fact the whole book bears the stamp of reality
from coyer to cover. There is hardly a false or strained
note in it. It is the ruthless study of a woman's life. . .
If it is not the novel of the season, the season is not likely
to give us anything much better."— The Taller.

THE SECRET GARDEN

by Mrs. HODGSON BURNETT 6/-

Author of " The Shuttle," " Little Lord Fauntleroy," etc.

Large Cr. 8vo, with coloured Illustrations by CHARLES ROBINSON.

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and vivid in human interest as the reader would expect
from her. . . The illustrations by Mr. Charles Robinson
are the work of an artist rarely gifted." — Daily Telegraph.

LITTLE BROTHER

by GILBERT GANNAN 6/-

Author of "Devious Ways," "Peter Homunculus. "

" Mr. Gilbert Cannan's new novel is an intensely interest-
ing study of an unusual personality — brimming over with
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read .... fascinating even when most provocative. . .
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interesting novel that the year has so far yielded." — Globe.

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MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

JOHN CHRISTOPHER:

I. Dawn and Morning. II. Storm and Stress.
by ROMAIN ROLLAND each (>/-

Translated by GILBERT G ANN AN. Author of " Little Brother," etc.

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feel interested at once. You can read it and re-read it.
It never wearies nor grows irritating."'

— The Daily Telegraph.

" His English exercises so easy an effect that the reader has
never for an instant the irritating sense of missing beauties
through the inadequacies of a borrowed language ; we
have also compared it in many cases with the original and
found it remarkably accurate. Readers may then be
assured that they will lose but little of Mr. Holland's
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him in the original, and Mr. Cannan is to be warmly
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JOHN CHRISTOPHER IN PARIS

by ROMAIN ROLLAND 6/-

Translated by GILBERT GANNAN. Author of " Peter Homunculus,"
etc.

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whatever, ultimately receive the praise and attention
which it so undoubtedly merits. . . There is hardly a
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review in The Daily Telegraph.

Ready Shortly :

JOHN CHRISTOPHER : The End of the Journey

Translated by GILBERT GANNAN, Author of "Devious Ways."

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MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

A PORTENTOUS HISTORY

by ALFRED TENNYSON 6/-

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village are roused against the poor, good giant, only
because he is greater than they are. Mr. Tennyson gives
a vivid and unpleasant picture of prejudice and instinctive
cruelty. In Mr. Tennyson we have a new novelist with
something real and weighty to say."— Westminster Gazette.

Author of "The Book of a Bachelor," etc.

" The book is in fact, to be read for its light-hearted pictures
of modern Paris, Paris seen with eyes of someone who
knows it intimately and loves it. Mr. Schwann has more
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proves that Mr. Schwann, as a student of life, has the
right touch and the right humour." — The Standard.

HER HUSBAND'S COUNTRY

by SYBIL SPOTTISWOODE 6/-

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amusing, and presents on the whole an attractive picture
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MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

ZULEIKA DOBSON

by MAX BEERBOHM Q/.

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THE DEVOURERS

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sympathetic charm." — The fivening Standard.

THE HOUSE OF BONDAGE

by C. G. COMPTON Qf.

Author of "Her Own Devices," etc.

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misfortune but by free will, she still remains ordinarily

sympathetic. The plot of the story is well worked out,

and some of the minor characters are excellent." —

Truth.

" His easy, graceful writing is very pleasant to read."

— The English Review.

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MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

A LIKELY STORY

by WILLIAM DE MORGAN 6/-

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world that he shows us."— Standard.

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enjoyed every line of it."— T.P.'s Weekly.

"You cannot resist the charm of the narrator, who
makes you feel as if you were listening to an improvisa-
tion."— The Spectator.

Author of

JOSEPH VANCE IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN

ALICE FOR SHORT AGAIN

AN AFFAIR OF DISHONOUR SOMEHOW GOOD

SIR GUY AND LADY RANNARD

by H. N. DICKINSON 6/'

Author of "Keddy," etc.

" Extraodinarily clever indeed is this study. Apart from
the absorbing interest of the two central characters, the
book is full of able and suggestive studies. The whole
book is one of the most remarkable that a young man has
produced for many a long year."— Morning Post.

THE MAGNATE

by ROBERT ELSON 6A

"It is a story that every reader will recommend after
reading it — and with excellent reason, for it is fresh,
original, and powerfully written." — Daily Graphic.

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to all persons who like a novel which is full of thought
and detail and brims over with optimism." — Daily Mail.

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MP. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

THE WHITE PROPHET

by HALL GAINE g/.

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something of an international event." — Times.
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ance."— The Daily Graphic.

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THE BONDMAN THE ETERNAL CITY

CAPT'N DAVEY'S HONEY- THE MANXMAN

MOON

THE LAST CONFESSION THE PRODIGAL SON

THE BLIND MOTHER THE SCAPEGOAT

THE CHRISTIAN

MRS. DRUMMOND'S VOCATION
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THE MARRIAGE OF
CAPTAIN KETTLE

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Once more we have our little firebrand, as plucky, as
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him.

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MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

THE PILGRIM KAMANITA

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THE PATRICIAN

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—The Taller.
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THE COUNTRY HOUSE THE ISLAND PHARISEES

FRATERNITY THE MAN OF PROPERTY

A MOTLEY

THE GUEST OF QUESNAY

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MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

TALES OF THE UNEASY

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and sane."— The Athenaeum.

ESTHER

by AGNES E. JACOMB 6/-

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drawn."— Pall Mall Gazette.

"Miss Jacomb has written in 'Esther' a very interesting
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— Morning Post.

THE GETTING OF WISDOM

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little girl and of the influence school-life has upon her
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— Daily Mail.

" ' Stalky for Girls ' might very well be the sub-title of Mr.
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— Saturday Review.

21 BEDFORD STREET, LONDON, W.G.

12

MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

THE WHITE PEACOCK

by D. H. LAWRENCE 6/_

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LOVE LIKE THE SEA

by J. E. PATTERSON 6/-

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omitted. . . . The three principal characters are well
drawn (.there are minor ones also excellently delineated)."

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BURNING DAYLIGHT

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over an unbroken trail of ice in sixty days that seems to
me absolutely the best piece of descriptive writing of its
kind that ever I read." — Punch.

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13

MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

ADNAM'S ORCHARD

by SARAH GRAND 6/-

Author of

THE HEAVENLY TWINS THE BETH BOOK

IDEALA OUR MANIFOLD NATURE

etc., etc.

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THE REWARD OF VIRTUE

by AMBER REEVES. 6/-

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MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

A PRINCE OF DREAMERS
by FLORA ANNIE STEEL

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minor figures are equally convincing. Mrs. Steel knows
how to reproduce in a way that few living writers can
rival, the gorgeous colours, the subtle intrigues, the
burning passions, and above all, the dreamy philosophy
and poetic atmosphere of the East. It has many thrilling
episodes told with admirable directness and force."

Author of — Athen&um.

THE FLOWER OF FORGIVE- MISS STUART'S LEGACY

NESS ON THE FACE UF

FROM THE FIVE RIVERS THE WATERS

THE HOSTS OF THE LORD TII2 POTTER'S THUMB
IN THE GUARDIANSHIP OF RED ROWANS

GOD A SOVEREIGN REMEDY

IN THE PERMANENT WAY, VOICES IN THE NIGHT
AND OTHER STORIES

ESSENCE OF HONEYMOON

by H. PERRY ROBINSON 6/-

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. . . Mr. Perry Robinson says exactly the right thing.
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the old-school politician, the passionate mondaine, and
the fashionable charlatan. . . This perfectly told story.

— Daily Mail.

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15

MR. WILLIAM HEINEMANN'S NEW FICTION

THE NOVELS OF LEO TOLSTOY

Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT.

ANNA KARENIN 2/6 net

WAR AND PEACE 3/6 net

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so successful that, but for the names, one might easily
forget he was reading a foreign author."

— The Contemporary Review.

THE NOVELS OF DOSTOEVSKY

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ends." — Evening &£ews.

I. THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV

3/6 net

Ready Shortly :

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

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16

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